The Stewardship ethos
Many organisations in the land and property sector have an interest in creating great places. The Stewardship Initiative aims to bring these together balancing the demands of commercial drivers with the needs of people, nature and the economy.
The Stewardship Initiative proposes a framework to deliver communities of the quality of well-loved urban neighbourhoods. This is the model that built city quarters and neighbourhoods such as the Edinburgh New Town, Dulwich Village, Headingley - brought up to date.
Through bringing land together expertise and with patient capital prepared to invest into infrastructure, amenities and quality placemaking, the Stewardship model holds the key to unlocking delivery, quality, sustainability and liveability at accessible prices.
The Building Better Building Beautiful Commission identified the adoption of the underpinning ethos of stewardship in strategic land use planning as a means by which to balance competing stakeholder interests and to achieve ‘the right development in the right place’.
The Commission’s Stewardship Working Group proposed the need to also adopt a patient capital approach to strategic schemes to secure high quality place making and open up delivery.
Supporting research undertaken by Knight Frank on the patient capital approach to strategic development identified 4 key barriers to mainstreaming stewardship.
Subsequent testing of the proposition with The Stewardship Initiative practitioner group has highlighted the following critical barriers to mainstreaming Stewardship:
01
Cost and complexity of bespoke structures and tax arrangements in every case.
Threat of ‘dry taxation’ where tax falls due ahead of returns for land owners vesting land as equity and inhibiting Build-Lease arrangements.
Difficulty and high cost of land pooling / land assembly to create optimal development area.
02
Gaps in the availability of finance, favouring short term models and trading.
03
Extended and ill-defined planning process on strategic schemes, coupled with lack of trust.
04
Uncertainty of long-term political support for strategic land schemes which inherently cuts across political cycles - potentially inhibiting investment unless greater certainty can be assured.