Heath has had a 25-year career in the professional sports sector, with senior roles at Wembley Stadium, Saracens Rugby and, most recently, elite cycling events. 

He joined Argent in 2019 to oversee the strategic design and development of 50 acres of sports and wellbeing facilities at Brent Cross South, Argent Related’s north London town centre, where a reimagined London park will be home to an unrivalled multi-use sports hub, including 860,000 square feet of outdoor and 350,000 square feet of indoor facilities, e-leisure, sports retail and landscape design. Heath is Chair of the NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing.

I live in Oxfordshire so have enjoyed the lack of commuting and 3 extra hours a day to put towards fitness goals, yoga, listening to podcasts and cycling around the Chilterns.    I have however missed my fellow Argent colleagues and the collaborative nature of the office environment and am looking forward to a return to our offices in the weeks ahead.

I graduated in Construction Management so the built environment was never far from my heart but a subsequent career in sports meant I was never far from the health agenda.  Having recently been CEO of The Tour of Britain and The Women’s Tour (the UK’s leading cycling races) you’d assume I was in the business of putting on elite televised sport. However, local authorities who paid to host a stage of the race were doing so because they saw the race as a means to inspire people to be more active by taking to their bikes, to drive behavioural change and with it outcomes such as improved clean air KPIs and less queues at their GP practices.  From the outside it looked like sport but delivering a platform to drive health into society was very much at the heart of the role.

Having enjoyed roles across various sports I have had first hand experience of how sport can be used as a platform to deliver social change and to inspire positive outcomes.   Sports franchises are increasingly required to consider the communities in which they are based and to work in these communities to address social issues and deliver solutions.   Sports has a great power, which if harnessed correctly, can be a force for good.

My first boss was a hard taskmaster but 25-years later remains a mentor to me and is someone I speak to regularly and bounce problems off .  Rather like Sir Alan Sugar, he insisted that the skills of being able to build solid relationships with people in business and being able to sell, were more important than anything else.  When I reflect on my day I typically find myself having called on those two skills without fail.

At the heart of the development is 50 acres of open space which is hugely underutilised and offers us the opportunity to deliver a unique environment of sports and play complimented by extraordinary levels of programming and participation.  When it’s complete I’d like to look back on it and see the mental and physical health of our residents and visitors be improved as a consequence of what we’ve built.  It would wonderful to define a new reference point for mixed use developments and for Brent Cross South to be a benchmark amongst developments that excel at delivering wellbeing.

Any city that encourages active lifestyles gets my vote.  In Europe we tend to applaud Stockholm and Amsterdam for the way they have embraced cycling and made the car the exception but there are other cities such as Richmond (British Columbia) and Calgary (Alberta) that are delivering active, healthy and connected communities programmes that inspire me greatly.

What’s your favourite thing about London? And what’s the worst?

I love the buzz and the vibrancy but loathe the grime.  Hopefully the ULEZ and more EVs and cycling will address the grime factor in the future.

Hugely optimistic. London has its issues but we’re getting better at acknowledging and addressing them and it’s this willingness to front up to problems that will keep it as the leading city in the world.

What do you hope to achieve through the NLA Expert Panel on Wellbeing?

There is a huge body of wellbeing related work taking place across the property sector.  Ideally this new panel will provide thought leadership, help to consolidate quality examples of health in place and above all, contribute in a meaningful way to future policy making where possible.