Camden’s policy objectives

Camden council had clear objectives for the scheme to address the imbalance of opportunity in the immediate neighbourhood of King’s Cross. The council wanted affordable housing, local facilities, employment opportunities and a place that seamlessly merged with its surroundings. Both Camden and English Heritage wanted to see the historic fabric of the site retained and embedded sensitively in a new neighbourhood. This has been largely achieved. On a more basic level, councillors wanted a development that had the wide support of the local communities and one that they could personally be proud of.

Many of these objectives have been achieved and in interviews, councillors and officers working in the council today were positive. There is a sense that Argent has delivered on its promises and that a genuine partnership exists between the council and the King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership. Aspects of the scheme, such as the University of the Arts London, were not part of the original objectives, but it is seen as making a major contribution to the life of the area. Despite the failure to overcome the physical barriers around the site, there is evidence that King’s Cross is not viewed as a hostile corporate no-go area. It is becoming ‘another piece of London’ faster than comparable developments elsewhere.

There is also little doubt that King’s Cross has been a commercial success (which was always part of Camden council’s objectives), but it is too early to assess whether it has really addressed the needs of local people. It would be an interesting case study to track the long-term impact of the development on the life chances of members of the local community in terms of health, education and employment against any displacement impacts due to rising land values.

Argent’s development objectives

From Argent’s perspectives, the scheme is proving a phenomenal success. Despite incorporating a higher percentage of affordable housing than was anticipated in its initial business plan, commercial rents are considerably higher than anticipated and businesses are eager to locate there. This is no accident, but the result of a well thought out strategy that includes the management of the site and the selection of tenants. As a company, Argent is justifiably proud of what it has achieved and King’s Cross has proved to be a very convincing calling card to attract other major development contracts.

National and international interest

Alongside the Olympic Park, King’s Cross is now on the standard London tour for students and city and government delegations, especially from other European cities and Asia. The World Bank has identified four main aspects of the King’s Cross scheme that have wider applicability:³

1. Well connected transport hubs, when combined with high quality public space can generate major market value.
2. Public/private partnerships are an effective instrument for funding such infrastructure and property developments which require a wide range of skills and the ability to secure long-term funding.
3. Genuine community engagement and consultation can achieve better results and ensure that there is local buy-in to proposals.
4. Development proposals of this nature require a long-term commitment and sufficient flexibility to be able to respond to changing market conditions and requirements.

Is it a success so far?

The King’s Cross scheme is genuinely mixed use in a way that earlier London commercial developments such as Broadgate and Canary Wharf were not (Figure 10.2). The market clearly views it positively; rents are rising steadily (Figure 10.3) and buildings are being let. The strategy of up-front investment in key infrastructure and the public realm has established a clear, identifiable (and marketable) place and brand. The early occupation of the Granary Building by the University of the Arts London has established an active public centre in the site, and this has been supported by early provision of restaurants and bars, and an arts and events programme. As a consequence, headline rents are over double those that were predicted when planning approval was granted, despite the intervening property crash.

Figure 10.2: King’s Cross mixed uses in comparison to other developments.

Figure 10.3: Comparative office values in Central London.

Judging by the largely complimentary reports in newspapers, property and architecture magazines, and by the number of visitors to the site, the emerging development is becoming a popular destination. It is still too early to assess the public reaction, but from observation, people from surrounding neighbourhoods are using the site. The canal steps are popular and children are playing in the fountains (Figure 10.4).

The management regime is encouraging rather than controlling this.

Changes in the London economy towards creative industries, and the relocation of the University of the Arts London, mean that King’s Cross is probably a more varied, vibrant and interesting place than was envisaged at the start of the process. Inevitably, the development will deviate from the original plan in response to market conditions, and small-scale changes will occur to buildings and spaces as dictated by innovations in technology, social taste, transport and environmental considerations. By the 2030s it will require a certain amount of retrofitting, renewal and adaptation. In time, parts will be redeveloped and renewed. The real test will be whether it adapts, consolidates, maintains value and achieves long-term success similar to London’s ‘great estates’.

The role of central government

Various government administrations played key roles behind the scenes in relation to King’s Cross.

• Without the earlier government decision to retain the non-operational land holdings of British Railways on privatisation (in contrast to the privatisation of the Post Office), and the subsequent decision to put these into the public/private partnership, a very different scheme might have emerged. The government also held its nerve and decided not to sell the railway lands when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) deficit emerged.
• When London’s successful Olympic Games bid created pressing deadlines for the completion of the various rail infrastructure projects at King’s Cross, the government stepped in, provided the funding and appointed a project sponsor and drew up the tripartite agreement to coordinate works.

However, none of the investment plans for the underground station at King’s Cross St Pancras had considered the detailed design implications for development over the station. In retrospect, therefore, the new King’s Cross concourse is a triumph of architectural ingenuity rather than central coordination. Infrastructure decisions had also been made without a detailed consideration of their impact on the future development of the railway lands. The construction of a high-level embankment into St Pancras (rather than a viaduct with through routes) limited options for connecting the site to its adjacent communities, particularly Somers Town to the west.

The financial model

The approach taken by the landowners set many of the conditions that enabled King’s Cross to succeed:

• The decision not to seek outright financial bids for the site meant that the landowners were able to give more weight to criteria around deliverability.
• The use of a formula to value the land in the future meant that neither the landowners nor the developer were left chasing unrealistic expectations set by too high a land price. Government procurement practice is becoming increasingly complex and risk averse, with too much emphasis on financial considerations. Had the King’s Cross site been tendered today by a government agency where financial criteria dominate the selection process, it is highly unlikely that Argent would have won.
• The model of creating an entire mixed-use estate under long-term ownership rather than ‘develop and dispose’ building by building, set the conditions to produce a place of high and lasting quality. For the long-term owner of an estate, the provision of high quality open space is as important as it is to the public. A long-term commitment to own and manage a site also reduces the risk profile. The developer is not tied into a strategy of hitting the market near its peak, but can benefit from long-term appreciation in values. This leads to the important, but counterintuitive conclusion that large-scale multi-phased regeneration schemes can actually be less risky than a series of ready-to-go buildings.⁴ A long-term model requires long-term thinking. Had the development been carried out by a publicly limited company, the board would probably have put the short term interests of its shareholders first.
• As a single estate rather than a collection of individual developments, control over its build out has never been relinquished.
• Finally, the decision to seek a development partner for the whole site and to set up a joint delivery vehicle also played to the strengths of both parties. The landowners might alternatively have sought planning consent for all or part of the site before disposing of parcels of land for development. This model is being applied on the site of the London Olympics. Here a public development corporation has commissioned a masterplan and is bringing forward development on individual plots. As a rule, public development bodies do not have sufficient commercial expertise to understand the key relationship between a masterplan and the optimisation of land values. It will be interesting to see which model ultimately produces the best piece of city and the best financial return.

Local politics

The way in which the planning system operated in Camden was a product of its political history. Every borough has political agendas that go back a long way, are parochial, not always logical, and are often hidden. Early campaigns against insensitive development proposals had left a legacy of suspicion among some Camden councillors and community activists. This created tensions within council politics and it was always uncertain whether decision-makers in committee would follow the policies set by the leadership. The King’s Cross experience challenges any notion that planning can be divorced from the political process.

• Investing time in researching the local political context can pay dividends. Public relations agencies are no substitute for personal commitment from the landowner and developer.
• As the majority of Camden councillors had relatively little interest in King’s Cross at the start of negotiations, support had to be built and the complex planning issues had to be reinterpreted in terms relevant to politicians. This demonstrates the value, in an overtly political context, of reframing technical problems into more compelling, everyday propositions. While plans are necessary, narratives can be more effective in establishing buy in to ideas and concepts. The propositions that were used to frame the development gained the attention of councillors and established broad objectives that were then translated into Camden council’s policy agenda. The process of convergence allowed time for the concepts to mature and become embedded within the organisation.
• The work by London and Continental Railways (LCR), before Argent’s appointment, provided an invaluable foundation for cooperation with the Council and other stakeholders such as English Heritage. It established significant political capital and goodwill that facilitated the planning negotiations.
• Complex projects also need individuals, often politicians, who are willing to act as their champion and to take responsibility for managing the political interface. Without their intervention at King’s Cross, the scheme is unlikely to have received planning consent.
• Having set a policy direction, the council leadership gave officers considerable freedom to ensure it was implemented. This is rare in councils. This empowerment was essential to the credibility of Camden’s council’s team at the negotiating table. It also allowed negotiations to proceed in a structured manner without being deflected by short-term political agendas. It enabled lateral thinking and problem-solving at critical times. An unexpected outcome of the independence granted to Camden officers was that when the council changed political control, the King’s Cross scheme was not tainted as a politically driven project.
• Both negotiating teams recognised the inherently political nature of planning, and were politically astute. Argent understood that Camden council had to deliver on key agendas, especially affordable housing, and that the interests of external stakeholders had to be respected.
• Internal political management was essential in taking the scheme through Camden’s decision-making process. This had the approval of the leadership and was supported by key champions among the politicians.

There are areas where the political process within Camden council broke down and this could have undermined the entire process. The council leadership was reluctant to address problems within its development control subcommittee and this put officers dangerously close to the fine line between implementing council policy and interfering in the political process. To negotiate with any credibility, officers need to be sure that their committee will support their recommendations, and must adapt their approach to shifts in political direction. The refusal of members of the development control subcommittee to accept any pre-application briefing or debate on the development was potentially disastrous. Times have moved on since then. Government guidance and accepted practice mean that such bizarre circumstances will be increasingly rare.

The negotiation process

The negotiation process built towards agreement rather than away from an initial proposal. Its rules were: discuss, propose, consult, evaluate, agree, abide by agreements and move on. While the negotiating teams had not been schooled in the theory, they had the benefit of long experience, and it helped that both wanted to reach an agreement as long as this did not undermine their basic starting principles.

• By consulting from first principles, each side could learn, and shift positions towards compromise without retrenching.
• The negotiating teams were similarly structured, with strategic and technical strengths, and they had a similar style of operation. They avoiding haggling, brinksmanship and bluffing.
• Considerable store was placed on reasonable behaviour and rational argument.
• A key feature of the negotiations was the ability of each side to generate creative solutions to resolve deadlock, and to trust each other sufficiently to explore alternative options without prejudice.
• The mutual desire to avoid a public inquiry provided a keen focus in moments of deadlock.
• By adopting a process-driven, rather than an adversarial, approach to negotiations, the conditions for a genuine partnership were built at King’s Cross. The negotiation process was based on partnership at many levels. Partnership working is a state of mind, about a willingness to find shared goals, and to be prepared to explore shared approaches that might result in richer outcomes. Like any relationship, a partnership has to be built and nurtured, which requires trust and shared values.

Both sides engaged, consulted, listened and where possible acted to represent others’ interests, but they followed deliberate strategies to limit the direct involvement of other stakeholders at the negotiating table. While this may not follow best practice in negotiation, it was effective. The tactic to lock Islington into Camden’s approach and position removed a major external uncertainty. Argent’s early resolution to work constructively with English Heritage allowed a considered debate to take place regarding the preservation of the site’s historic buildings. The management of all these relationships effectively minimised risk in the planning process.

The planning process

That the King’s Cross development would be commercial, dense, and mixed use was implicit in the CTRL funding, and in the parameters already set by national and regional policy. Camden council had no scope to propose alternative development scenarios, nor was there the political desire to do so. There was a simple choice: work to get the best possible scheme within these constraints, or face quixotic opposition.

• Even in the year 2001, few councils could have resourced the negotiations as Camden did. Its chief executive recognised that up-front investment in the planning team would result in a better development that would bring significant long-term investment into the borough.⁵
• Argent’s decision to separate the planning application for the Islington ‘Triangle’ site removed a major external uncertainty.
• The process of negotiating from principles rather than hard-set plans meant that the adversarial nature of the planning system was largely bypassed. The planners were free to engage in a more constructive debate and were thereby liberated to some extent from their traditional reactive role.
• The hybrid application developed for King’s Cross shows that there is latitude in the planning system despite its apparent inflexibility. This solution provided the flexibility Argent needed to respond to changes in the property cycles and it gave Camden council the degree of certainty that it required. It was legal and practicable, and has since provided a useful template for similar developments elsewhere.
• Camden council went to great lengths to ensure that its policy framework, particularly the requirement on affordable housing, was aligned with its emerging objectives for the scheme. The alignment of the Camden Unitary Development Plan to the emerging London Plan removed any policy grounds for mayoral intervention. This minimised the risk of an appeal and subsequent decision by a public inquiry.
• The judicial review had been anticipated and its risks were controlled successfully through meticulous legal checks on documents and procedures.

Ultimately, however, planning can control but cannot mandate, and it is ill equipped to move outside its role in allocating land uses. For instance, it cannot dictate the day-to-day management of place, and the long debate over Camden council’s right to adopt the public realm reflects the inability of planning to really make places. Nor can planning ever be a fair process. Argent’s Robert Evans admits there is some truth in community criticism that it can be ‘a one way cheque that binds the council, but not the developer, who can always come back with amendments and changes’.⁶ The ability of planners to negotiate effectively on such complex development schemes also remains severely constrained by their lack of expertise in property and construction finance. Camden was always at a disadvantage in this respect. Current changes to local government finance and the planning system mean that far from levelling the ‘playing field’ for such negotiations, planners face an ever-steeper uphill struggle.

Masterplanning

The masterplan provided a framework for discussion on obtaining the legal consents; it determined the quantum of development (rather than any preconceived, fixed or unrealistic figure), and through the masterplan, tensions and anomalies in the social, commercial and financial agendas could be brought together and resolved.

• Flexibility was built into the masterplan in terms of the street network and the arrangement of building plots. It was capable of being built in different configurations and sequences. This allowed Argent to be opportunistic and creative during a very depressed period in the market. If inflexible geometries or excessive building or plot sizes had underpinned the masterplan and required single-phase implementation, it is unlikely that the scheme would have been built.
• Commissioning two masterplanners and a landscape practice avoided stylistic bias and generated healthy creative tension.
• Robust masterplans with lasting social and economic value cannot be produced quickly. The time that was allowed for challenge and debate led to a better masterplan. Even two years into its design, the framework was still evolving in response to a deeper understanding of the site and its context.

Historic buildings

The importance of city-building that incorporates the historic fabric is gaining acceptance beyond the UK and Europe in other parts of the world, including China. Historic buildings can be seen as a barrier to development but in fact they act as a creative challenge to designers and developers to produce richer and more complex pieces of city.

• Although there was a presumption to retain the heritage at King’s Cross, it was the decision to embed and reuse it that was significant. The heritage buildings are the basic building blocks of the scheme; they not only provide the unique character of King’s Cross, but were integral to the strategy of creating commercial value.
• English Heritage brought both a scholarly approach and technical expertise to the debate. Its officers understood the development constraints and could relate these to difficult questions over the preservation and reuse of historic buildings. English Heritage was pragmatic enough to support significant change while ensuring that it did not damage the intrinsic character of the area and its buildings.

Architecture

One of Argent’s guiding principles was never to relinquish control over the appointment of architects. Within the framework provided by the masterplan, they commissioned a range of good architectural practices to design individual buildings. The result was never meant to be radical architecture but to build an enduring piece of city, London’s next ‘great estate’. In support of this approach, Rowan Moore, architecture critic of the Observer, suggests that extravagant new architecture would have been inappropriate in the presence of powerful historic structures like the stations and the Granary, and that prioritising the design of open spaces that set off these historic structures, rather than individual buildings, was the right approach.⁷

Consultations

The community consultation processes were extensive and in many respects exemplary.

• They contributed significantly to the knowledge base for the scheme, and did lead to specific changes in the development, albeit on the margins.
• They strengthened Camden council’s negotiating hand by providing a clear rationale for the debate on local issues.
• They changed Argent’s internal culture, a factor that influenced the community benefits package and had a subtle influence on the company’s approach to estate management in the long term.

That said, it is clear that the consultation process (when related to Arnstein’s Ladder, see Chapter 7), lay somewhere between consultation and involvement rather than a genuine partnership where stakeholders are enabled to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with the decision-makers. Within the fluid world of fragmented governance, rapid changes in political priorities and single-issue politics, stakeholder management is key to minimising risk. The ideal of genuine consensus-building through multi-party negotiation is unachievable in the face of deep ideological differences where the policy framework (and the underlying power structures) have already constrained the parameters of the debate. Sometimes conflicting objectives cannot be reconciled and political choices have to be made. Ultimately, the pre-application consultations did nothing to speed up the planning process. Ironically, they gave opposition groups the time to gather force.

Trust

A key lesson from this case study is that individuals make places through engaging in a political process. Personal relationships do not necessarily fit comfortably within academic research, but they are the building blocks of city-making. The subject of trust comes up constantly in the narrative: trust between officers and councillors, between the landowners, and between the negotiating teams.

• This trust, or social capital, allowed informal off-the-record problem-solving at crucial junctures.
• It also allowed deals to be made, from that agreed between LCR and Exel on the value of the land, to the signing-off of each step in the negotiation process.
• The process allowed sufficient time for trust to be built. It was not blind trust, but it was the product of considerable up-front investment in time and effort.

Timing and luck

At times the process also involved a considerable amount of luck.

• London’s successful Olympic Games bid unlocked the finance to restart the transport infrastructure.
• The judicial review delayed the scheme, but also meant that Argent was not dangerously exposed financially or contractually at the height of the financial crisis.
• The University of the Arts London managed, against the odds, to extend its borrowing.
• Having survived the financial crisis, Argent’s first commercial buildings met a rising market. Argent made its own luck by taking sizeable risks and seizing opportunities when they arose. As Roger Madelin commented, ‘in the past, commentators in the property sector used to say that the three important factors in successful property development were, “location, location and location”. The reality is more “timing, timing and timing”.’⁸