Hi, Tom. How are you?

 

Hi David, I'm very well, thank you. It was an interesting evening last night, with the election!

 

Well yes, we're still in the shock and awe period of reacting to that aren't we? I'll ask you for your thoughts on house building generally later with that in mind. But I thought we perhaps could start by talking about your Oval Village project. I hugely enjoyed coming down to an event you ran quite recently in the gasholder where you staged a sort of cricket-themed event with lots of people there from Lord's Taverners, having a last little cricket match overlooking the famous Oval ground. I wonder if you could first just describe the Oval Village project in general terms, beyond the gasholder, as well, and also give me a few lines on what made you choose to run such an event to mark its topping out period?

 

Okay, so Oval Village is a large brownfield regeneration site in Lambeth. It's just over seven acres and it was originally a former gasholder owned by a company called SGN. There was also a large Tesco on Kennington Lane, with a car park and a small office building owned by Access. Effectively, Berkeley worked with Lambeth Council, the GLA, Surrey Cricket Ground and some of the adjoining owners to parcel the land together and come up with a comprehensive development solution, which was known as the OAKDA (Oval and Kennington Development Area) Master Plan locally. We have been promoting that as Lambeth since 2013. The masterplan effectively, through two major planning applications, secured planning for 1360 new homes, including 35% affordable homes with a mixture of social rents and shared ownership homes. Those are currently being delivered at present. All of the affordable homes are tenure blind, and they are within some of the first two phases, and then filter through the remaining phases of development. One of the other major deliverables of Oval Village is the commercial space. We have around 170,000 square feet of mixed-use commercial space ranging from shops, restaurants, cafés, through to retail spaces, and also a significant number of office spaces, including an 80,000 square-foot office building called Oval Works, which we've entered into a partnership with Land Securities to deliver. We recently finished the first phase office which is called Phoenix Works, which is around 25,000 square feet. So, it's a genuine mixed-use development in a very centrally located Zone One location. The other thing that Oval Village will deliver for the local community is that it opens up a significant route through the area which has previously been blocked off for over 150 years. There are currently very limited cross-east-west and north-south routes through that area, and it's quite a large blockage. So, this will provide a significant ability for local residents and businesses to move through that area more freely. We've got about two and a half acres of public ground that people can enjoy as part of that. So, it's really creating a new community within the existing community. And coming alongside that new residents plus new business owners and employees who will be able to support the rest of the commercial offering.

 

You run a youngsters’ cricket team, and I think you've got some interesting views on what that kind of thing can do for the community and perhaps hence why you ran such an event in the gasholder? Would you like to elaborate on that?

 

Yes, so we've obviously been involved quite heavily with Surrey Cricket Club since we started on this development, including the Surrey Cricket Foundation, which runs a lot of their programs in the local community. And with the Berkeley Foundation's support of the Lord’s Taverners as well, we've got quite a heavy cricket theme down at Oval. The opportunity came from a discussion with the Lord’s Taverners around marking the commencement of build within the gasholder to holding a cricket game within the structure. Bearing in mind that the gasholder was built around 150 years ago, and it's been ‘watching’ and been the iconic backdrop to the cricket ground for such a long time, the idea - to play a game within the gasholder and mark its importance to the game – and obviously see all the benefits that the game has to the community, particularly around the Oval, and all the work that the Surrey Cricket Foundation and the club do with the local community was really an opportunity we couldn't miss.

 

You had a bunch of youngsters there, as well as Mike Gatting, the famous ex-England and Middlesex cricketer, wasn't he?

 

That's right. As they say, Lord's Taverners are promoting disabled young people in cricket. And I think it really does demonstrate, as Mark Curtin, the CEO from Lord's Taverners said, that disabled young people can play cricket and adapt to playing cricket in any environment. This is a perfect example of how we've turned effectively a building site into a cricket pitch and demonstrated that people of all abilities can play a game of cricket in any location. I think it was really touching to see just how much some of the young people got out of having such an opportunity with the support of some great ex-cricketers such as Mike. And obviously, all the support we got from the ECB - the chairman and the chief executive attended the event as well.

 

So, gasholders are generally having a bit of a moment, it looks like! There is the scheme up in Kings Cross; you're doing this here and you've just won planning permission as a company for another quite large scheme at Bromley-by-Bow for your Berkeley St. William arm, designed by RSHP. What is it about these structures that you like, and what are the key issues? I'm imagining that decontamination, land remediation and space planning are some of those issues?

 

Yes. We've had quite a long history of redeveloping some of these former utility sites across the group we had a previous joint venture with Thames Water, called St. James which refurbed a number of the old waterworks sites across the southeast. And then we've also redeveloped a number of the sites working with Southern Gas Networks, including the site at Kingston and then the Oval, and then we more recently entered into a joint venture with National Grid, which formed into St. William. Effectively, these gas sites are now redundant across London, the southeast, and the rest of the country, and they're big, large, brownfield, complicated sites that could unlock a lot of homes. We like working in partnership with a landowner on a scale where we can actually deliver more than just the individual site; we can deliver a much bigger portfolio of new homes, places and opportunities for the local community. The quirk with gasholder sites is that they are contaminated, but generally we find that the majority of sites which are gas storage are lightly contaminated. But they can have more extensive contamination and decontamination requirements. There's obviously a lot of infrastructure that goes into these sites as well. We often have to move significant amounts of existing gas infrastructure, pressure-reducing systems, medium- and high-pressure pipework. So, it's not just about what you see on the surface of the gasholders. Some of the sites have listed gas holders on them, including the one at Oval and some of the ones on some of the other jobs in East London, so where we have those listed gasholders, we obviously have to look at incorporating those into the design of the building and the design of the site. They do give a certain element of, I suppose, quirkiness and interest that a lot of other sites don't have. And I think that's part of how we approach these developments - how do you create places that people actually remember? Whether that's the architecture, whether that's the landscape, or whether that's the mix of uses we provide on the site. And I think these gasholder sites provide an element of interest there. And we've been trying to celebrate that as much as we possibly can whilst still delivering the maximum number of homes and affordable homes on these sites.

 

Final question, because we're just coming up to time. We are in the afterglow of the general election, so I just wondered whether you had any initial thoughts or hopes for the housebuilding sector as a whole. Are you reasonably optimistic that housing is quite a central point of policy with the new government?

 

Yes, I think the statements that have been made in the run-up to the election have been all positive, from the new government around promoting house building in this country with a target of 1.5 million homes over the next five years. I think what does need doing is that the force for good that we believe that new homes deliver, and places deliver really does need to come to the fore now and, be promoted with local communities whereby everyone sees the benefits of these new homes being delivered, for all generations, not just for young people, but for senior living as well. And obviously, those in between. And I think it's good that the Labour Party seems to be promoting a wider mix of potential land uses, potentially looking at some elements of the Green Belt and the Grey Belt, as they call that. And I think there's generally a positive approach to "let's get homes being built and delivering for local communities". And so, we are positive. And we look forward to working with the new administration to actually move some of the delivery forward.

 

And let's hope the England cricket team can up its game a bit as well.

 

There's an important test match with Jimmy Anderson's retirement so yes, hopefully, fingers crossed that that will, that will go well.

 

Brilliant. Okay. Well, lovely to speak to you, Tom. And good luck with all those projects. 

 

Thanks very much, David