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Barking & Dagenham regeneration vehicle launched
Barking & Dagenham Council’s new development and regeneration company has launched, with plans to help deliver 50,000 homes in the borough over 20 years.
The company, called Be First, is wholly owned by the east London council and plans to work on large regeneration sites across the borough.
In addition to running Barking & Dagenham’s planning functions and its estate regeneration projects, it will seek to turn a profit through planning consultancy and development management services, as well as developing.
Staff from the council’s planning department transferred to the new company at the start of this week.
Veteran civil servant and Peabody chair Lord Bob Kerslake will sit as Be First chair.
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The council expects to see a return of £10m a year by 2021 on its initial investment – a loan of around £4m.
It first approved plans for a regeneration company in November last year, following an independent study of potential for growth in the borough.
Through its own development, Be First could eventually deliver up to 1,000 homes a year, with most transferred to the council’s housing company Reside and others for market sale.
It has a current staff of 55, with funding available for another 20 – and aims to create 20,000 jobs through its operations in the next two decades.
“It’s an exciting time. I think this is a great model. While other boroughs have outsourced services or gone into partnerships with developers, this is a concept for the 21st century,” said Pat Hayes, managing director of Be First.
“Some of the estate regeneration work will be entirely for social purpose, but some other things we do will have a much more commercial edge.
“There’s loads of land and opportunity for development in the borough, but one of the things we want to do is make sure you can do regeneration without it just being gentrification and leaving people behind.”
Update: at 13:05 04/10/17
A previous version of this article suggested Be First would be working on the Barking Riverside regeneration, which is actually being managed by Barking Riverside Ltd. This has now been corrected.
