Hello, Matt. How are you? 

Very well. How are you going? 

Good. I wanted to talk to you about your latest permission, which is the former GSK headquarters, I think we should call it that probably, but it's known as 980 Great West Road. Tell me about what your feelings were when you were at the committee, when it all went through, and the whole planning process. 

I think that my feelings at the committee were that most of the hard yards had been put in ahead of that with ourselves, with the borough, whether it's the planning team or the regen team or the borough's leadership, and it took us quite a long time to buy that site. It took us more than a year to buy it, so we were already quite embedded in our journey by the time we actually exchanged contracts. So, we've had a long relationship with Hounslow. We've had a long relationship with the community and our neighbours in Brentford as well. And I think that the process was so collaborative, and the alignment was so clear, and the ambition, that by the time we got to committee, I would never be so complacent as to say it was an easy ride, but we were in the right place. And we all went in there with a vision of what comes next for the next five, 10 years. It wasn't really a hurdle; it was more of a milestone. 

David Taylor  

And to what degree was that eased by the co-design process? 

It was eased by it in that it's a very clear marker of how you are approaching development and the importance and the integrity of the voices on whose opinions are taken. It was probably the only part of the consultation process that we didn't do. We used an external agency to help us find a broader range, a broader demographic than that which would be immediately available. So, we pay people for attendance. We pay people for their time. And we cut our co-design across six different topics in order to make sure we were focusing on all of the things that matter to people. It was part of a process that really was so extensive that there was very little in the way of objection. We only had nine objections, which, for a scheme of almost 2500 homes, is kind of unheard of, really. 

Is paying them unusual? 

Not if you're doing it properly. You’re just paying for the people for that time, because you might be dealing with people that are time-poor, and you might also be dealing with people who need to be working. So, they don't have access to the time and the patience that the people who normally engage with development have. So, if you want to talk to younger families, and if you want to talk to people who are working all the time, or indeed, young people, then find them some Amazon vouchers! 

Because the last time we spoke, you were talking about a different innovation in this whole consultation process, weren't you? But this time it's the co-design element. 

Yes, that was working with Space Form on virtual twins, in order to try and get different voices into the process then as well. But we did that again here. 

Did you? 

Yes, we're still working with Space Form, and we still do... 

Explain how it works, just quickly. 

It's a 3D digital twin of the space, and you can toggle between different design options. You can walk around the space. You can ‘fly’ around it. You can see who's designed different buildings, what the different tenures are. And also, you can work on those spaces between buildings that you can't really conceptualise, you can't really visualise without a tool like that, because you can't get people to site… 

David Taylor  

…And this was people you were interviewing coming to you and wearing headsets? 

No, just laptops. 

Oh, really? 

Yes, it wasn't full VR, or AR; that's something to consider, but you don't really need to for the purpose of what we were trying to do there. 

So, tell me about the project. I mean, I've got some bare statistics here: 2,300 new homes, which is a big old chunk on a 13 acre site, over 24,000 square metres of commercial space, and nearly 2000 permanent jobs. That's quite a significant neighbourhood, isn't it? Tell me about the sustainability approach as well, of that, which is quite key, and also your perception of Brentford over the last decade as a place. 

So, we'll start with the sustainability. The reuse and retrofit perspective, or piece of that development was really quite central to how the master plan evolved. So, the embodied carbon that is present in a building that is only just over 25 years old is enormous. It has a five acre basement that sits underneath. It's a huge site and so the way that we approached it was to audit the embodied carbon present in all of the different parts of that building. So, it's kind of five buildings within one: the tower and the basement were by far the most intensive owners of that embodied carbon. And so, we retained the tower... 

The famous tower… 

Yes, that's right. And then using some of the steels from the other buildings to then go a little bit higher on top of that tower and the basement also is retained pretty much in its entirety, which then sort of fed the master plan, really, helped us design it in terms of through routes where loads could be taken. It was a really extensive approach to begin with. We ran three days of workshops at the RIBA on Portland Place. We brought cross sector experts from the local authority, some futurists, some academics, some people from the development world, and just worked through the vision for the building, which is quite rare, really, to get that time to sort of focus. So, we spent quite a lot of time in stage zero. And then once we appointed architects, who are Howarth Tompkins, who did an amazing job as master planners, Studio Egret West, who are leading on the tower, and also then took over the land, the landscape design as well, and have done a really amazing job on it. And then we also have dRMM and Metropolitan Workshop, alongside Turley, who led on the planning. All best in class. 

How did you select that team? 

So, the architect [choice] was not a competition. We've done international competitions before. But it was an interview process that probably took place over about two or three months, and we asked for showstopper designs. I mean, there was a lot of time spent forming those briefs off the workshops I was just talking about. So, there's probably a suite of about eight or nine briefs that ranged from landscape and public realm across to sustainability. And so, everyone knew exactly where we were going with it, what sort of development we were trying to do and what sort of neighbourhood we were trying to create, before anyone put pen to paper on it. 

And can you give us a sketch of what the co-design and the locals inputted that changed the design? Was there anything specifically that you can recall? 

I think that even down to the amount of the building that was retained. Now, I'm not going to say that there's a community lead on whether or not we retain a building, because that's an economic decision as well as a sustainability one, but where that public realm works hardest, what kind of provisions we would make for young, teenage and young adults? What Brentford was missing? What the next stage was in Brentford's evolution? 

What is Brentford missing? 

Brentford's probably missing what we're trying to do underneath the M4 on the eastern side, which is called Underside, which is - we were on site this morning talking about how it's kind of the most East London part of West London. Because on the western side, you've got the canal feeding the river down there. And then you have Boston Manor Park to the north. It's quite idyllic and a very sort of peaceful space. You move across to the eastern edge, and you have a kind of Chicago, New York, Hackney at a push, sort of Underside piece, a bit like the Bentway in Toronto, which will benefit from some genuine activation, and something that will give us four or five years to light the place up whilst we're building, and ahead of it, becoming a place in its own right. So that's part of the first phase to be developed. 

So, it's meanwhile-y? 

It's meanwhile-to-permanent, yes. And that part of Phase One also contains a home for the creative tech innovation hub as well, which we are in the process of finalising as a meanwhile use at the other end of the site, if you're still with me, with the University of West London and with Hounslow itself as a partner. 

And your observations on Brentford over the last decade with the stadium etc, What’s the change been like? 

I've not been there for that long, and so that's a reasonable caveat to make, but at the same time the football club is absolutely at the heart of that community, and the work that it does in and around the community is completely exemplary, I would say, the best in the Premier League. And that's coming from Liverpool fan! 

Why is it so good? 

Maybe some of it was borne of crystallising within the planning applications of the stadium. But I don't think you can ask someone to make a community trust as good as that. It's just very engaged, and it's very in touch, and it's very happy to be grassroots. So that club, it's tendrils - tendrils, is the wrong word! - spread far and wide. 

Tentacles? 

(laughs) Yes! 

So that's one thing. Ballymore have also done a really good job a bit further down south of our site, on the High Street. I think that's probably a little bit of a reason why we didn't get so much community push-back at the very start of our journey. Because people will have spent time within that development and just thought, well, this is alright, isn't it? So, it's not a case of development happening to communities that doesn't bring any benefit. If you'd have seen Brentford High Street seven or eight years ago, and then you saw it now, there probably aren't that many people that don't think it's better now, since Ballymore delivered that scheme there. So that's helped. 

And then, I guess the emerging Golden Mile district is quite a dynamic space to be. There's a really good Developers Forum that has emerged there. I've been involved in developer forums before, and they don't always have the energy and the drive and the vision. And part of that comes from its component members, but then part of it also comes from the fact that it engages outside the sector with a bunch of local businesses who are really involved as well, like JC Decaux and Ajar Technologies and Brompton Tech. They're all very much in that. And Sky too. But then also, again, some kudos back to the local authority, to the regen team, who are really quite instrumental in trying to push that vision forwards, that they launched at MIPIM. 

 

I can't help but think of the Great West Road when I think of that kind of area. So how much is a sort of dismantling of that as the perception of the area, part of what everybody's aiming at? 

I guess so. But it is what it is, right? I mean, we were celebrating the centenary of it last year. And as industry evolves, I can see how that place will. There are challenges within working on the Great West Road, definitely, because it isn't a particularly friendly environment. But one would hope that the alignment that we have between central and national government, with the potential for some funding coming to unlock that, perhaps the arrival of the West London orbital as well. These are all things that can help the place continue to build. But, yes, the Great West Road is a fairly harsh environment, and that's why you kind of need to try and to make the best of it, so you end up with things like Underside, hopefully, where, it's an otherwise derelict, fairly run down space that can become something interesting and engaging for people to get to. 

Lastly, about affordable housing - you settled on 22% here; just talk about that whole provision story? 

So, this was the first time, we believe, that anyone has used the GLA s new emergency measures? So, when the ministerial statement came out, we were in planning and had submitted but were about to enter some tricky viability discussions. So, with a lot of credit to Hounslow's leadership, to manage to apply that flexibility and just recognise the importance of the vision. So, the emergency measures were adopted ahead of time, essentially to give us the chance to do this at the March Committee. Hadley has three sites that will be affected very positively by the emergency measures. I know that some people across the industry don't believe that it's gone far enough, but we have found that it will definitely help unlock the best part of 5,000 homes for London and so we very much applaud the direction that that's gone in, and the kind of, perhaps the difference in approach that we're seeing in the way that GLA engages as well. 

Anything else to say about this project, or Hadley going forward? I mean, you just have to get on and build it now, right? 

Yes! So, now is the difficult bit, right? We've designed some beautiful buildings and a lot of public realm and an amazing mix of tenures and some great meanwhile uses. But yeah, we need to get a spade in the ground. So, at the moment, we are looking at financing options that take us to site. I'd love to be able to say a little bit more about some of who those partners can be, but don't think we can just yet, but yes, a race to site, really, and to get the first phase of this out of the ground. 

Congratulations on it all, Matt. And best of luck! 

Thanks very much!