Building homes, making places Berkeley Group

BUILDING HOMES, MAKING PLACES

Tony Pidgley, Chairman Rob Perrins, MD

Whether it is building one-off executive homes, luxury riverside apartments or thousands of houses in urban regeneration schemes, The Berkeley Group is focused on creating fully sustainable environments and great places to live. Peter Mercer talks to Chairman Tony Pidgley and MD Rob Perrins.

Main image: Chelsea Bridge Wharf Inset: Chelsea Bridge Wharf prior to development

BUILDING HOMES, MAKING PLACES

The Berkeley Group builds homes. In fact, over the last ten years, it has delivered more than 48,000 new homes, mostly in London and the South East of England. But Berkeley also builds neighbourhoods; it specialises in working with public and private partners to create successful and sustainable communities. That is why in the last ten years it has also created 436 acres of public open space, more than 700,000 ft2 of community facilities and 2.8 million ft2 of commercial space.

First established in 1976 as Berkeley Homes in Weybridge, Surrey, the Group has become, in less than four decades, one of the most successful property developers in the UK, with a current market capitalisation of some £2 billion. In the early days it focused on one-off, high-quality executive homes, mostly sold off-plan, that offered buyers individuality and a high degree of customisation. Today Berkeley builds for everyone; its developments range from twenty or so high quality homes near market towns to luxury London riverside apartments and complex, mixed-use urban regeneration schemes that can comprise over four

thousand homes as well as schools, community centres, student accommodation and homes for senior citizens – even railway stations. In its first years Berkeley would build maybe three or four houses a year; today its biggest developments will take more than 20 years to complete.

Yet while the scale of its operations has changed dramatically, Berkeley’s core values and its operating principles remain essentially the same. It is focused on integrity, attention to detail, individuality, continuing customer care and the creation not just of desirable homes but of vibrant and successful communities.

“We have always had very clear aims and principles and while customer demands, the market and our business structures have become much more sophisticated, our guiding ethos remains very much the same,” says Tony Pidgley, founder of Berkeley Homes and now Chairman of the Group. “We are focused on delivering the finest, value-for-money products and to do this we employ the best people, trust in them and give them responsibility and autonomy. Adding value is the essence of our operations; we typically buy land without planning permission and take responsibility for every phase of every development.

“We have always sought to give every unit we build character and individuality. Now we are involved in so many large scale projects we need to combine that with creating communities to which people can feel they belong, places where they can feel safe, where children can play and where schools, shops and community facilities are on hand. We don’t just build a project and then walk away – we can be on a site for as long as 25 years, developing it, managing it and making sure it remains a great place to live. I’d say that what we do now is not so much home building as place making. Delivering great homes in amazing places is what Berkeley is all about.”

Berkeley Group Managing Director Rob Perrins develops this theme by explaining that the key to providing desirable and successful homes is what it has always been – making sure that people’s needs are exactly met – but that now Berkeley builds not just for up-market homebuyers but for everyone, the challenge is much more complex. “You have to establish exactly how people live inside their homes, what spaces they inhabit and in what ways,” he says. “We have always had, for example, a minimum bedroom size but now we have to take into account the ways in which many different kinds of people – with different family sizes, different lifestyles and so on – occupy their internal spaces. Making sure they have enough storage space, optimising the width of corridors – it sounds quite simple but in fact it often demands complex engineering solutions.”

Autonomous businesses

At a quite early stage Tony Pidgley took the decision to develop his company through a devolved business structure of subsidiaries operating across Kent, Hampshire, North London and Sussex. Each of these divisions

Kidbrooke development

Royal Arsenal Riverside development in Woolwich

was given a high degree of autonomy, with its own management team that was responsible for everything from finding the sites, buying the land, building the houses and selling them. The aim was to ensure that the entrepreneurial spirit of the original business was not lost as the company grew. This devolved structure continues to be at the heart of Berkeley’s business strategy; today a total of 22 autonomous operating companies give the group the breadth of expertise and the geographical reach to enable it to undertake any type of development.

“At Berkeley we have always been determined to avoid becoming a corporate monolith,” explains Tony Pidgley. “Of course the Group takes care of treasury functions, accounting, tax and so on but beyond that it acts essentially as a banker to the divisions, agreeing investment budgets and strategic plans and then letting the divisional management teams get on with it. We don’t even have a central HR function – the divisions manage their own people. It’s all about encouraging self-motivation, responsibility, the fostering of different cultures and, indeed, competition between divisions. We believe it keeps everyone close to the customer and focused on delivery; it also gives everyone greater job satisfaction.”

In addition to the autonomous operating companies the Berkeley Group is made up of distinct divisions that all have strong brand identities. Berkeley itself carries forward the original business of small developments of executive homes but today also undertakes medium to large scale developments in towns, cities and the countryside that include mixed use schemes, riverside apartments, refurbished historic buildings and urban loft spaces.

The St James division was originally a joint venture between the Berkeley Group and Thames Water. Today it handles projects that include private residential development, commercial property, and recreational and community facilities and has a reputation for creative solutions in sustainable mixed-use developments. St George specialises in mixed use sustainable regeneration in London. Its schemes have dramatically transformed large areas of brownfield land, reviving the city landscape and establishing thriving new communities.

St Edward is a joint venture between Berkeley and the Prudential Assurance Company that specialises in high-quality residential developments, while Berkeley First is an award-winning developer of design-led contemporary homes that feature innovative architecture and intelligent space planning.

Urban regeneration

It was during the early 1990s that Berkeley began to apply its expertise to the development of complex brownfield sites in towns and cities throughout the country. The Group quickly gained a reputation for its innovative approach to urban regeneration and for its focus on mixed-use developments and the creation of sustainable communities.

Today the Berkeley Group is a leader in the field of urban regeneration; its target is to build over 95 per cent of its developments on brownfield land. Its management teams have become experts in delivering attractive and sustainable communities while also extracting high value from the land it develops.

“Brownfield development takes a lot of time and a lot of capital and you need experience to make it work successfully and profitably,” explains Rob Perrins. “Typically you will spend one to two years to get through the planning phase, another year to deal with the decontamination issues; then you have to construct the underground car park – an essential element of every large urban project – and then actually build the units.”

Berkeley’s Chelsea Bridge Wharf mixed use development on the south bank of the Thames next to Chelsea Bridge is an impressive example of the scale and complexity of the Group’s brownfield regeneration projects. The site was originally warehousing but had been used as a car park for 30 years before Berkeley bought it in 2000 with an initial investment of £54 million. It took a total of nearly £252 million to complete the regeneration and today Chelsea Bridge Wharf

Woodberry Down Housing Estate

comprises 1,128 homes (330 of which are affordable housing), 186,000 ft2 of commercial space, including a four-star hotel and spa, offices, retail and leisure facilities as well as 2.6 acres of public space.

Further down-river, Berkeley’s Royal Arsenal Riverside development in Woolwich is still in progress. The site was acquired by the Group in 2001 but the scale of the project – on one of London’s largest brownfield regeneration sites – is such that it is estimated that it will take up to 30 years to complete. The site, which was bought by Berkeley for £43 million, was formerly used for the manufacture of military equipment by the Ministry of Defence. The Group expects to invest a total of £1 billion in this 76 acre project. When complete it will include 4,960 homes, of which nearly 2000 have already been delivered (including 610 affordable homes). Twenty one listed buildings have also been already refurbished. Royal Arsenal Riverside also features 3.5 acres of public space and 300,000 ft2 of commercial space, including a gym, hotel, shops, a museum, a pub and cafes. The development includes a district heating network supplied by a lowcarbon combined heat and power plant.

It also includes a new railway station. Berkeley has invested £100 million in the development of a London Crossrail station at the site which will offer direct links to the West End in just 18 minutes. The Group has also helped to provide an on-site pier which now offers regular Thames Clipper river taxi services to both Canary Wharf and central London.

Estate transformation

A very different challenge, though on a similar scale, is being met by Berkeley in its huge project to completely rebuild and transform Woodberry Down, a North London housing estate. Before the project began parts of the estate were in fact so distressed that they were used as sets for the Polish settings in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Now the site in Hackney is undergoing an unprecedented 25 year regeneration programme that includes the replacement of 2,000 existing houses with 5,000 new ones and the total transformation of the site with new shops, a school, a community centre, crèches, gyms and public spaces. Berkeley is employing pioneering concepts in sustainability, environmentallyfriendly housing, integrated community facilities and energy efficiency to transform what was one of London’s most deprived

areas into an exciting new mixed-community neighbourhood that will offer economic opportunity and a sustainable community as well as high quality new homes. Berkeley is to invest total of £1 billion in this project, which will be one of the largest developments of its kind in Europe.

Fundamental to the success of the project is the active involvement of local people in the decision-making process. An influential residents’ organisation and a local social enterprise, the Manor House Development Trust, have both played a major role so far. Berkeley also keeps closely in touch with all the residents, holding weekly meetings onsite and producing a regular newsletter. The result, as a new report reveals, is that 90 per cent of residents say that they are satisfied with their lives in the new surroundings.

Tony Pidgley says, “This is a real opportunity to create an exemplar regeneration scheme on a large scale, providing lasting benefits to new and existing communities in Hackney. As such, it is in perfect harmony with Berkeley’s commitment to promote the social and economic renaissance of urban areas. In our desire to deliver more homes we have to focus on creating places where people can thrive. In the past, housing booms have often created dreary places. This time, it must be different. What we are doing at Woodberry Down provides a blueprint for regeneration and for all the new development Britain needs to beat the housing crisis.” n

Visit: www.berkeleygroup.co.uk

Woodberry Down Housing Estate