Here is Deputy Mayor of London Sir Edward Lister’s keynote speech at the Develop Croydon Conference in full:
It seems to me to be right that you should be having events like that this here because, and Tony (Newman, the council leader) is absolutely right, this really is a centre of regeneration, there’s so much happening here and it’s so exciting.
The council has done a brilliant job in bringing this forward in the way it has. Back in 2008, when Boris Johnson was first elected Mayor of London, he made a commitment that he would represent all of London, not just inner London, and he made a commitment then to do a lot in outer London.
He established his Outer London Commission, which looked at what can and cannot be done, and we have constantly at City Hall worked on this.
Keynote speech: Sir Edward Lister
It is very much about London as a whole and in Croydon it has had some very clear results. It got an opportunity area framework, it got an increase in housing supply, it got regeneration and it got the Croydon Growth Zone – all things I want to talk about this morning.
But it’s the latter two, the regeneration and the Croydon Growth Zone, that are absolutely key to ensure Croydon’s continued vibrancy.
With some of the money that we have been able to put in from City Hall, plus the money that Croydon has raised, some very significant sums, to bring about new jobs, new investment, new facilities in the town centre, and of course to be able to pursue all of our ideas and our dreams for the Whitgift Centre and all the work of the Croydon Partnership.
And all this has been about working closely with Croydon and working closely with TfL, and then that combination has brought together ideas for the growth zone. And the idea here is that people capture both the GLA’s and the borough’s growth in business rates and share that in a way that supports the borrowing we need to do to bring about the infrastructure, to bring about the sort of change, that really needs to take place if Croydon is to fulfil its full potential.
Packed hall: The audience in the Fairfield’s Arnhem Gallery
I also want to spend some time talking about how the opportunity area works. Being blunt, we calculated, with our demographics, that London needs 49,000 homes a year.
Go back three years our calculations showed 32,000 new homes a year so you can see the shift in thinking that’s taken place. We then brought about the Further Alterations to the London Plan. We’re very fortunate at the GLA that London continues to have a London-wide planning document with statutory force.
So once we brought about those alterations, and established that 49,000 number, it also established a number with Croydon. It was agreed with Croydon Council, by the way, it wasn’t just us imposing something it was something Croydon themselves recognised as being the right number.We came to a number of 1,435 homes per year. That’s the new number we need to build.
The plan also identified a number of opportunity areas right around London, where we could provide homes and jobs. And these are on reservoirs of brownfield land or land which for whatever reason got opportunities to change. That has the potential, across London, of building 300,000 new homes and 500,000 new jobs.
Working together: Sir Edward Lister with Croydon Council’s Jo Negrini
In the planning system across London at the moment we have just under 250,000 units in the system. To have a London-wide target of 49,000 isn’t a silly thing to do. Already in the system we have fie years supply so you can see that these numbers are achievable.
Two years ago, jointly with Croydon and Transport for London, we published a planning framework established that Croydon could produce with its partners 7,000 new homes and 7,500 new jobs.
The objectives of the opportunity area are to support the development of those 7,300 new homes; to create the infrastructure which is necessary for 17,000 new residents and above all to promote the retail core and get Croydon back to where it was many many years ago as the primary retail experience in south London.
It is also designed to ensure that we’ve got the location of the commercial and office accommodation right in the town centre and around East Croydon station, a plan for the delivery of new streets and the infrastructure which goes with it.
Quality call: Sir Edward Lister
To make sure we’ve got high quality architecture, all of this will come to nought if we don’t have that. And to ensure that we’ve got an enhanced transport system, which can support the growth.
We also did another big exercise the development betweenCroydon Council,TfL and City Hall and that was of the Development Infrastructure Fund. The first document sets out a vision, the DIFs actually says what it’s going to cost.
And that’s started to take our thinking through between all of us about what we need to do to raise the kind of money.
And that’s helped us to raise £3.5m that came from the building fund which helped Ruskin Square, the affordable homes grant which helped Croydon build its self build programme, and both affordable rent and shared ownership, and it provided a mechanism for us to go forward and work out how we could afford the new homes and the need infrastructure that we needed.
In a wider context I don’t have to tell you we’re at the centre of a housing crisis that is affecting absolutely all of us but it’s not unique to London. If you want to go to Paris, New York or Hong Kong, many other big cities in the world, it is a crisis and a severe one.
And then you must never ever forget that we are in a world of international capital which will move to wherever they can make money. So it is important that once we recognise our challenges we make our plans to deal with it.
The trouble is so much of the debate is caught up with so many distractions, it’s full of myths. The first one, whether London is actually full of empty homes, well it’s not, it’s at the lowest level of empty homes since the 1970s. That all of London is in the hands of foreign buyers. Yes, 6.5 per cent of the London market is in the hand of foreign buyers, but most of that is in Zone 1.
All of that is really masking the key issue, which is that we need to build more homes. We need that 50,000 homes a year. This year, next year and every year for the foreseeable future. And we also need jobs and that’s why, by 2025, we need space in the city for another 500,000 jobs. Croydon’s a great place for that because you’ve got the opportunity to build new homes in the centre, you’ve got the opportunity to build commercial property here.
Big opportunity: Sir Edward Lister
It can very much play its part and become not just an important contributor to the demands of London but also in its own right become a major location and a major hub as a consequence in south London.
If we don’t do that then the economic impact will be enormous and it will hurt every one of us so it’s not an option this, we don’t haven’t got any choice, we have to build those homes.
And, you know, London has seen a jobs boom in recent years – three times the national average in the creation jobs. We are creating jobs at an enormous rate. Between 2009 and 2014 the number of jobs in London grew by 14 per cent. The number of people in London grew by eight per cent. And here’s the really frightening number: the number of homes grew by four per cent.
We are nowhere near catching up. But the trouble is we’ve never been near catching up. Unfortunately we’ve got over 50 years worth of lack of supply.
Numbers game: Eddie Lister
There has been no big building boom. The last building boom was in the 1930s when actually quiet a lot of Croydon was build. And that was all done on greenfield land and without planning permission, actually!
The Luftwaffe came along and took it out, slum clearance came along took some more out, and we started building homes at a rate of 20,000 a year. And we have moved along at that number, just fractionally moving up and down, basically since the end of the war. By the way, in 1933 we managed 80,000 homes.
Now at last, we are getting those numbers up and those numbers are rising significantly but they have got to rise an awful lot further.
There are some things that we can do at City Hall. We’ve created the London housing bank to try and raise more money, we’ve released all of that land that we ourselves have got, some 635 hectares, and now 99 per cent of that is out there in the market place and has gone from our books or is in the process of going from our books. So we have managed to release all of that.
Housing shortage: Sir Eddie Lister says it’s imperative more homes are built
We ourselves have helped fund 100,000 affordable homes in the city and we’ve also put in place created 55k shared ownership schemes so we have also created 55,000 homes through shared ownership schemes.
We are doing quite a lot but we’ve got to do more. We’ve now established a London Land Commission with the majority of boroughs and central government which is in the process of drawing up the Domesday Book list of land.
Croydon does know but you might be surprised to know generally the public sector generally doesn’t know what it owns, so that has been a big exercise in actually identifying who the ownership.
We’ve created 23 housing zones which we believe between them will build 50,000 homes and create 100,000 jobs and we are accelerating the development of opportunity areas.
Great opportunity: Sir Eddie Lister says these are exciting times for Croydon
We have also created two mayoral development corporations, one at the Olympic Park in the East, one at Old Oak Common, and they are very much about bringing about massive transformation in their areas.
The next steps are of course something I personally feel passionate about in that we’ve got to do further reforms to the planning system.
Not because there’s anything wrong with the planning system, It system is extremely good but the planning system can be extremely slow and bureaucratic. So we need to do things that speed it all up.
And a lot of this is not controversial, perhaps, there’s much in the housing bill that is controversial but things that we are pushing and the government has been accepting, which are major changes to section 106’s are done, the viewing framework, protecting wharfs, various issues around permitted development rights and CPOs.
So there’s a lot if it there and all of it is about applying pressure: pressure on councils, pressure on the, GLA, pressure on TfL and pressure on every developer in this room again to get a move on and do things or pay a penalty.
And a final thought. We also need to be realistic. Yes of course you have got to make sure nnew homes are there for Londoners and none of us want to see a new asset class of money just sitting in property.
But we do want to see that property being built so must therefore we must encourage the capital whether it’s home grown by rearranging our pensions arrangements to release more cash or whether money from overseas.
And we’ve seen the benefits of that here in various parts of London, you’re seeing evidence of that here in Croydon and we’d be nuts not to encourage this as strongly as possible.
At the end of the day we all want development and there’s a great opportunity in Croydon. The council is very supportive, City Hall is supportive, TfL support it, we all want to see that.
PHOTOS BY IAN STRATTON – PHOTOGRAPHY365.COM