Roger Madelin, director, British Land

Insider Media

Property veteran Roger Madelin CBE told Insider’s Midlands Property Lunch that Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds need to quadruple in size to become global cities. The director of property giant British Land was speaking at the event at Millennium Point, Birmingham on Tuesday (21 January) “There should be a clear plan to double the size of the Birmingham metropolitan area, as well as the same for Manchester and Leeds,” said Madelin. “In fact they should all probably quadruple looking at international examples.” He said while the size of second, third and fourth cities around the world were a lot closer to their country’s capital city, there was a huge gap between London and other leading UK cities. Birmingham covers 103.4 square miles, Manchester covers 45 and Leeds 213. This compares to London’s 607 square miles.

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm Roger Madeline, I'm the Director of British Land, jointly in charge of the

00:14Canada Water Development and before that I was lucky enough to be the Chief Exec and

00:18the Development Director at Argent, responsible for Brindley Place, the conception of Paradise

00:25Circus now Forum up in Birmingham here.

00:28Birmingham's been a terrific city for several centuries and I'm lucky enough to have arrived

00:36here in the late 70s at university, watching it come out of some very, very tough times

00:44in the 70s and 80s and then seeing the plan, the Highbury Initiative and then a decade

00:51later that turned into the big city plan and that level of ambition with political leadership

00:57and executive leadership was terrific and I'm sure that's what it's got now.

01:05It needs to clearly set out its ambition in my view and in the view of many, Birmingham

01:10and other cities outside of London need to double if not treble or even quadruple in

01:15size to be competitive in the current climate and I'm sure that given the powers, given

01:24the autonomy, the ambition can certainly be here, give the cities the tools and let them

01:30get on and do it but Birmingham's got some great things going for it and with the leadership

01:37and with a clear vision it should be allowed to get on and try and hit that aspiration

01:43of doubling, trebling, trebling in size.

01:46Yeah, we're looking at international examples, connectivity between the various cities in

01:54various countries, we might choose to look at whether that's Germany or France or Italy

01:59or Spain is generally better.

02:02Now I know we do have a plan here, it's taken a little bit longer than we would have liked

02:07and High Speed 2 obviously is not quite what we all hoped for but connecting the cities

02:14to each other as well, it has been talked about for many decades.

02:21That's what we need to do to allow Birmingham and the other cities to expand.

02:27Now it is about the economy, it is obviously housing is phenomenally important and training

02:32and skills and all of that we know but fundamentally it's got to be driven by a successful economy

02:38and as I said earlier, if each city, if each local authority of each region could have

02:45a very, very strong economic growth department spokesman right up there at the chief executive

02:51or the leadership level to make sure that every decision that is made is about expanding

02:57the economy and capturing the benefits of growth and being very pragmatic about how

03:03to capture that growth after it has happened, not with the taxation that has been creeping

03:10in over the last couple of decades trying to fund affordable housing and infrastructure.

03:15There are some good examples up here with the tax incremental finance, the LEP that

03:21was led by Andy Street which delivered the infrastructure changes at Paradise Circus

03:26now Paradise Forum is a very good example and things like that should be looked at and

03:33expanded again to allow Birmingham to raise its full potential.

03:39Well I have been lucky enough to have spent several decades in development and had the

03:44privilege of working in Birmingham and Manchester and London and elsewhere, it's the same planning

03:50system but it's just been very interesting watching how different jurisdictions actually

03:57manage resource and deliver the planning system.

04:02First of all it needs a very, very clear vision and that can be city plans or local plans,

04:07very strong leadership and then good resources and priorities to get things done.

04:12I've given examples of the same planning system in various locations where it is interpreted

04:18in very different ways and resourced very differently.

04:21I said some of our projects in London where we have to do over 42 different massive documents,

04:29some costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, some taking years in the making and they literally

04:34go on the shelf and no one reads them or needs them in the future and I think someone

04:40reviewing and maybe that is the economic development officer, someone reviewing with real power

04:46saying you really do not need to do that retail impact assessment or that highways assessment

04:54for a development that is 10, 15 years in the making.

05:01The level and the complexity of what is being asked for, part of that is driven by legislation

05:06but quite a lot of it is being driven just by people on the ground asking for it because

05:11they can and that needs to be curtailed by someone who's got real power and real pragmatism

05:17and humility just to say is this really necessary, is it really going to add value to what we

05:23want to achieve.

05:30www.globalonenessproject.org

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