Providing Solutions
At Welbeck we understand the impact that failing to provide enough homes can have on a human level. The well documented, but much misunderstood housing crisis in the UK has a very real human cost.
Unaffordable and poor-quality homes and insecure tenancies can rob people of the security needed to achieve life’s natural milestones. The privilege of owning your own home was, for many, taken for granted a generation ago, but today it is out of the reach of so many.
A failure to provide enough homes is fundamentally caused by a failure to ensure sufficient land supply. At Welbeck we provide a crucial service in ensuring appropriate land is identified and taken through the system in the most efficient way possible to help alleviate the housing shortage.
Working in Partnership
We work in partnership with landowners, to obtain and optimise planning consents on land which can then be sold to housebuilders by way of a competitive dialogue/bid process to bring forward much needed housing; with it often comes vital hard and soft infrastructure and community green space too.
Urban Extensions and New Settlements
Decisions to expand an existing settlement are rarely popular but a look at historic maps demonstrates that over decades hamlets have become villages, villages towns and towns cities. Places have always expanded to meet the needs of the country’s population and will continue to do so.
But there is a right way and a wrong way to deliver expansion. Too often we see it done the wrong way, resulting in unaffordable and characterless urban sprawl, and for local communities the thought of more of the same is what drives fear. However, Welbeck firmly believes that if homes of mixed tenures and types in beautiful places are created in collaboration with local people, done sensitively and in the right location, with the right amenities and provisions, the social and environmental benefits can be considerable.
Equally, creating new settlements that bring significant change to localities is rarely without controversy, again largely because of the poor quality of what has gone before. But, at Welbeck we champion the delivery of self-sustaining, beautiful, walkable new communities that are as much about the provision of jobs, opportunities, and infrastructure as homes.
These new settlements embrace the directives of the government’s sustainable National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) and the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission.
The benefits of working with Welbeck Land
Strong Financial Backing
Welbeck has ample funding to meet the expense of each scheme ensuring ambitions and expectations are always met, innovation is never hindered, value is always achieved, and progress is never slowed by internal funding considerations.
Through its Welbeck Strategic Land vehicles, we work with investor partners who provide the business with long term institutional capital.
Specialist Expertise and Experience
Our long history of success means we are trusted to do what we say we are going to do within this highly specialised, and often complex, area of planning. By utilising our expert in-house planners and bringing together the best consultant minds and specialists on every project, is how Welbeck has consistently been able to achieve one of the highest success rates in the industry.
Whether the project is 40 homes or a 4,000 home sustainable new settlement dedication, patience and a shared vision is key to success.
Collaborative Communication
Decades of delivering valuable outcomes for all our stakeholders has only been possible by working in partnership with local councils, communities, special interest groups, charities and opinion formers. Listening and engaging to understand the needs, concerns and aspirations of all parties from the outset is essential to success and for ensuring everyone shares in the opportunities created. Welbeck prides itself on open and honest constructive two-way communication, leading to better solutions for places, people and the planet.
Dedicated to Change
In recent years the industry has changed beyond all recognition, and it must continue to do so if it is to respond responsibly to the challenges of a very real national housing crisis and global environmental crisis. At Welbeck we aspire to lead the way on ESG (Environmental Social Governance) within our industry, not because it is what we should be doing, but because we must. Working with our consultants we constantly seek out opportunities to do better and be better for the communities we work within, and the environment which we need to enhance and protect.
Benefits for landowners
No Cost to Landowners
A substantial benefit to landowners is that Welbeck Strategic Land works in partnership with landowners and funds all the costs of taking potential development sites through the planning process, to test their suitability and to help meet the UK’s growing need for more new homes. There is no cost risk to the landowner.
This is done in line with local authority and national planning policies and guidelines, and in keeping with the principles of the government’s Building Better Building Beautiful commission.
Highest Value - Shortest Time
Landowners who take the conventional approach and option their sites to individual housebuilders, giving the housebuilders the right to buy on what is usually the developer’s own timing and assessment of value, are then largely if not wholly dependent on the housebuilder.
From that point on, the interests of landowner and housebuilder are not necessarily aligned. It may be in the housebuilder’s own interest – but not the landowner’s – to delay the process, or to reduce the price eventually payable to the landowner, by renegotiation.
The ‘Welbeck’ approach is fundamentally different and remains in line with the owner’s best interests throughout. It means the landowner receives best value, in the most efficient timeframe.