Hello Dan. How are you doing? 

Yeah, not so bad. Yourself? 

Very good, thank you. I wanted to talk to you about Vistry's partnership approach. Could you encapsulate that in words for me? 

Yes, sure. Vistry is the country's leading partnerships home builder. We deliver around 17,500 homes and. across 25 regions across the UK. For my part, I oversee the three London regions, so we deliver around 2000 homes across London each year at the moment. And I guess we'd summarise that the partnerships approach is at the core of our business; it's delivering a mix of housing tenures with partners who have a shared long-term interest in creating communities where people love to live. Those partners would include local authorities, registered providers, both in their capacity as both landowner and housing owner, but also for-profit registered providers institutional investors into build to rent, and then also other specialist housing tenure providers. Those contractual relationships can vary. At one end of the spectrum, we have full joint ventures. We currently have 15 of those across London. Again, that's with a mixture of local authorities and RPs, but also working closely with landowners through development agreements. Quite often, local authority landowners and other contractual mechanisms to deliver housing for those other specialist providers. We ultimately believe that partnerships are key to addressing a significant shortage of housing, both in London and the UK, for many reasons, but two primary reasons being: it's a great way of bringing multiple sources of investment and funding into a project. And then secondly, with those specialist advisors, we can provide the mix of housing tenures that clearly London and the UK needs. 

So, what's the temperature gauge of how it is out there at the moment? Most people I speak to say it's very tricky - housing especially, obviously. What's your feeling from the from the hard end of things? 

I'd agree. I'd say it is very difficult at the moment. We've had a number of challenges over the last, best part of two years now. Those challenges are well versed, but just to recap on them, cost inflation hit hard a couple of years ago and, whilst it's settled in recent times, hasn't come back down. So that has underpinned the viability challenge. I do welcome the announcements recently from MHCLG. I think that that will help in places… 

…Which aspects in particular? 

…I think the design aspects are sensible. So, when it comes to cycle parking, dual aspect units I think you always have to look at size specifics. But as a principle, I think they're very sensible and helpful. I guess the affordable housing percentage is - we probably have a slightly different view to others on that. So, we've made delivering affordable housing a core part of our business. It's very, very rare that we wouldn't deliver policy compliant affordable housing. And so, I think as a part of the wider delivery piece in London, I appreciate that's a measure that will hopefully help others build. In terms of our plans, we don't plan to deviate from the policy-compliant affordable position, and indeed additionality in many other places. Moving on to some of the other challenges, BSR again, well, publicised. We had our first two approvals a few months back now. I would say, I’ve been really encouraged what's been said by the data especially coming out the BSR, the restructure, the focus on clearing backlog, just the message generally, has been really positive. 

Have you seen any signs of that yet from your end? 

Yes, we have. Dialogue at the project level; the dialogue and communication has improved significantly, so that the direction’s clearer. I think the input into industry publications like The Construction Leadership Council guidance on making Gateway 2 applications - and there's further guidance coming – I think that's all really positive at this point. I think it's fair to say we will have to see next year if those promises can be delivered on. But definitely more optimistic than it was six months ago. And I hope maybe by mid- to late next year, we are going to be back in that normal 12-week regulatory environment. So, a bit more positive about that. 

RP capacity has been a huge challenge. Again, I feel a bit more positive about that, as well. We haven't quite seen the impacts of that today, but clearly the funding and the other measures that came in the Comprehensive Spending Review back in the summer, and the affordable homes programme was published a few weeks ago. So, there's good reason the obviously, that funding round will be showing early next year. There's light at the end of the tunnel. 

Good! 

I'd like to think by next year that maybe the RP market will be back functioning in a positive way and will support overall delivery. I think the one key remaining challenge that hasn't yet been addressed is the private sales market; in particular, first-time buyer support. I mean, there's huge demand, but that demand at the moment can't be acted upon; affordability, interest rates, etc. So, I have got a close eye on the Budget, hoping that there may be some measures there which may support that. So whilst being a partnership developer, delivering all those tenures that I mentioned, a large part of our business is delivering affordable housing of multi tenure, affordable housing build to rent, we still do deliver, you know, perhaps 30-35% of the sites as private sales and a well-functioning sales market is still really important for the overall viability of schemes. And I think I still think we want home ownership as an aspiration out there alongside all the other tenures. So that's the one thing I think if we could see a bit more light at the end of the tunnel there, then I think that's a really important step to picking housing delivery back up overall. 

But broadly, you're painting a fairly upbeat picture. I just wanted to ask you about your own projects, lastly, and also, what's next for you as a company? So, Clapham Park, do you want to talk about that in terms of the partnership working that you've been involved with there? 

Yes, Clapham Park is a really good example of our partnership model, and perhaps how that partnership model has helped us continue to deliver in... yes, maybe I painted slightly too positive a picture! 

(laughs) 

It's a really, really challenging environment, and to be clear, is still very, very challenging today, really challenging. But Clapham Park, is a joint venture with Metropolitan Thames Valley, and we will deliver, ultimately, over 2500 homes together. Over 50% of them will be affordable.  I guess the headlines I would draw upon there is that since late 2022 we've put 843 homes into construction, over 500 them affordable. By the end of this year, we will actually have completed about 500 as well. And all that in the context of all those challenges I mentioned previously. So, I think being in partnership with MTVH, having the affordable obviously, with the affordable housing provider and the landowner in that instance, has been really key to keeping us moving, but also bringing in other partners into London. We've delivered build to rent homes for Sigma Capital Group. We're also working with Thriving Investments to deliver some additional shared ownership homes. So that mix of tenures, providing all the way through from social rent through to shared ownership, intermediate to market rent and then open market sales, I'm fairly certain that we wouldn't be able to build at the pace we have if we weren't covering that broad sector of the market. And obviously, also, those partners have bought their own forms of institutional and private finance as well into the project. 

So those are the benefits in terms of speed of delivery and keeping things moving and overall project viability are the other real key benefits to that partnership, as well as being in estate regeneration, putting the residents at the very heart of what we do, obviously, having that skill set between both Vistry and Metropolitan being able to complement your skillsets, to get really close to the people on the ground. And ultimately, the fundamental reason that the regeneration is taking place. 

So, what's next? That's my last question for you. What's next for you and for the firm? 

Keep it focused on London. We're completely committed to London. We would actually like to do more. We have capacity. We're doing 2,000 at the moment. We definitely have capacity to step that up. I'm hopeful, or hoping, that with the right economic conditions in place that we spoke about a second ago, I think we'd be in a really good position to ramp up and help meet housing needs over the years ahead. 

Great. Well, thank you. Good luck with all of that. And let's see all those 1.5 million homes just done by Vistry alone! 

(laughs) It's a great opportunity! 

Thanks a lot. 

Cheers David.