Ahead of the Midlands Development Conference we hear exclusively from one of our event sponsors Woods Hardwick – discussing the arrival of HS2, the impact on the industry of Covid-19, the climate emergency and more:

Q. Woods Hardwick is one of the UK!s leading multidisciplinary firms working in the built environment, covering architecture, planning, surveying and engineering. Tell us a little about the firm and its growth over the past few years?

Building on the strong foundations we have fostered over 50 years from our head office in Bedford, we are now focused on growing our business across the Midlands. Woods Hardwick support developers, land promoters, house builders and land owners through the development process. Our services include architecture, urban design, civil engineering, town planning, transport planning, and land surveying. Our ability to offer these services in an integrated way is a major benefit to our clients, with the close working relationship across our respective disciplines enhancing our understanding of the development sector and the many opportunities to unlock development potential.

Despite recent months, these are extremely exciting times for Woods Hardwick and the Midlands as a whole. Based in the iconic Fort Dunlop building, the team is ideally located in the heart of the West Midlands, serving clients across Birmingham, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Northamptonshire, as well as the wider Midlands region.

Woods Hardwick puts its people at the heart of everything we do. As a professional services organisation and particularly in an industry where positive relationships are pivotal to success, we are focused on building capable, resilient teams who can deliver for our clients – and enjoy it! Our corporate culture actively encourages creativity, learning and personal development, as well as, pre-Covid at least, a heavy focus on organised social events with colleagues, whether this be a team dinner, or a more active football or hockey tournament.

After celebrating four years in Birmingham, we have just moved to a new office on the ground floor of the Fort Dunlop building. At 3,536 sq ft, it is almost three times the size of our former space, with the new open plan layout creating a collaborative environment for working relationships to flourish – this is especially important as the teams work closely on a range of projects.

Q. You’re well known across the Midlands for your work across the key cities – what are some of your proudest projects to have been involved in?

We work with many of the region’s most active house builders and developers. Our commercial projects range from student accommodation for the University of Leicester, logistics and distribution centres in Birmingham, Northamptonshire and up into Derbyshire, and a number of healthcare projects, including St Andrews Health Care, Northampton. In terms of residential, as well as delivering large scale schemes for household names such as Bellway and Bovis, we are also working with more boutique developers such as Mulberry Homes, a Midlands based developer creating beautiful homes that use sustainable building techniques and are sympathetic to the local surroundings. This year we secured planning permission for 94 homes in Warwickshire village, Temple Herdewyke.

Our Architecture team designed a residential layout and liaised closely with the local authority to gain Reserved Matters approval, with the engineers working simultaneously to produce a sustainable drainage surface water design. This included a major engineering challenge – to design a foul water rising main that required thrust boring underneath the M40.

Our commercial teams have undertaken a wide range of projects across the region including the Kerrygold (now Ornua) headquarters facility in Leek, a new headquarters building for Malvern Instruments, comprising development, manufacturing and administrative facilities and secured planning for a new c.100k sq ft warehousing/logistics building for CEF further north in Doncaster. Our teams have handled a variety of projects at different scales including refurbishment projects for HSBC, refurbishment proposals for Sutton Park Primary School in Sutton Coldfield and the extension and refurbishment of Tesco Daventry.

Q. The arrival of HS2 and the proposed connectivity across the wider Midlands region is being touted as a game-changer that with drive economic growth across the area like never before. Are you seeing a lot more discussions and conversations taking place due to the impending infrastructure projects – is there a real buzz around the Midlands?

Absolutely. With HS2 and extensive plans to transform transport infrastructure across the region, it is an exciting time for the Midlands. Despite recent months, these are extremely exciting times for Woods Hardwick and the Midlands as a whole. With Andy Street’s ambitious plans for the Greater Birmingham area, now more than ever we need to help our clients navigate the planning process and support regional growth.

With six stations across the Midlands, HS2 is opening up the connectivity of whole towns and areas. The East Midlands hub station at Toton will be one of the most connected places in the UK, with up to 14 high speed trains an hour. Midlands Connect has plans to connect the hub to major centres in the region including Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and East Midlands Airport. This includes proposals for the hub station to link to the existing motorway, as well as the classic rail and tram networks. Derby and Nottingham are working together on an ambition that envisages a journey time of just 10 minutes from their city centres to the HS2 hub, better linking the two cities in the process.

And the interchange plans for Solihull are equally exciting. The new Interchange Station will not only offer the opportunity to provide rail services to Birmingham and the wider West Midlands region, it will also catalyse economic growth in the area immediately adjacent to
Birmingham Airport and the NEC, known as the UK Central Hub.

Q. Covid-19 has obviously impacted not only the industry but the outlook of how we’ll now look at designing places, spaces and homes. Are you seeing developers re-visit designs to take learnings from the pandemic, and how are you approaching new schemes?

The Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on markets and commercial activity is presenting a range of challenges to the industry. There is a lot of uncertainty at the moment, making it harder to anticipate how things could unfold. Yes, some construction projects have been delayed, supply chains have been affected and redundancies made – it’s a hard time for our industry, as it is for others.

But, the Midlands is a strong region, anchored by innovative leaders and organisations that want to see it flourish. Infrastructure must continue to be built, we have to continue to build new homes and support the local communities – that does not go away.

However there is definitely a sea change – some of the more forward thinking house builders we work with are revisiting previously designed schemes and adding garden office pods and creating spaces within the garage roofs and adding external spiral staircases to utilise this space in line with the current need/desire to work from home. Another example can be seen in the offices, healthcare and education sectors, where there is a greater importance being placed on ventilation as part of design.

Whilst the impact of Covid saw an initial sector slowdown, developers are reporting that the rapidly changing consumer shift to online/internet based retail is now fuelling a dramatic increase in the demand for warehouse space. As companies accelerate investment to reflect the change in consumer behaviour, Woods Hardwick is looking to bring its core skills in the logistics and warehousing sectors to the region.

Q. Another area of change that’s happening quickly is around sustainability and tackling the climate crisis – what changes has Woods Hardwick made to ensure they’re leading the way?

As a business we are focused on sustainability, both in our offices, and on behalf of our clients. At a grass roots level, this includes donations of computer equipment to local schools, to decreasing our use of paper across the business. But this is also a priority in terms of the projects we deliver.

As part of the design process, Woods Hardwick now considers a wide range of decarbonising strategies focusing on sustainability, renewables, landscaping, ecology/biodiversity, SUDS, transport strategies through to modern working methods, drawing on appropriate specialist consultant advice.

As engineers we have been designing our surface water drainage schemes to include an allowance for not only 1 in a 100 year storm events, but also an additional allowance for climate change, which more recently has increased to 40%. There is also an increased desire to promote source control of surface water drainage design and promotion of the use of permeable paving, swales and shallow attenuation basins.

ukland.com is one client that is heavily focused on eco-living, creating the most energy efficient and low carbon housing. With more than £1billion GDV of current projects, Woods Hardwick is supporting ukland.com across the design, planning, engineering and delivery of these schemes. Current projects range from a single eco-friendly carbon zero 6,500 sq ft home, through to residential development sites of 3,000 units.

Q. Do you think we’re reacting quick enough as an industry to this crisis?

In short yes and no. While many property companies have started to – and are making good headway – reduce their carbon footprints in recent years, a lot more needs to be done – and quickly. As an industry we should be committing to making new and existing buildings net zero carbon producing by 2050, in line with the aspirations of the UN’s Paris Agreement and their Sustainable Development Goals. We see and work with many of residential developers who are focused on incorporating these measures into their development designs now, but commercial buildings remain rather more underprepared for scaling-up the fight against climate change.

Ultimately we must do more and as specialists working with multiple developers in the built environment, we can help to support and educate our clients on the best route to creating sustainable buildings of the future.

Q. In terms of the Government’s White Paper what were your key take-outs from this?

In September 2020 the Government published its long awaited White Paper on proposed reforms of the planning system in England: Planning for the Future! is the subject of a 12 week consultation running to 29 October 2020. In so much as the Government’s promise for radical reform, it doesn’t disappoint.

It sets out a root and branch review and change to the current system of plan making and development management. We are looking forward to advising on the implications as the proposals make their way into a new system of plan making over the coming months.

Change to the planning system has been long overdue in the drive to increase the delivery of new housing, particularly in the current economic climate. The Government has recently introduced a raft of changes to increase the flexibility in the system including changes to the use classes order and permitted development rights. Whether a complete overhaul of the system as now proposed is the right approach in these uncertain times remains to be seen.

The new targets on local plan making and development management are demanding and one aspect that we require careful consideration is the resources available to our planning departments to re-skill and change focus in adapting to a new system. While this is acknowledged by the Government, the proof will be in the pudding on delivery.

Q. You work on a number of different projects – from residential and industrial, to education and healthcare. Do you find that your approach changes to each type of development?

Everything we do, whether this be securing planning permission for a 500,000 sq ft industrial unit to designing a new school or a surface drainage solution for a housing development, is based on key principles – the right solutions stem from the knowledge, imagination and innovation of our team, but always rooted in commercial viability and practical application.

Every project is different, and challenging in its own right, but by becoming an extended part of our clients’ team we really get under the skin of a project. Many of our clients benefit from Woods Hardwick’s ‘one stop shop’ approach – and with experts in all areas of development, it can make for an efficient and effective process. Client relationships are based on trust and honesty. If we think client ambitions for a site aren’t feasible we aren’t afraid to share this – it’s as much about being able to have those difficult conversations with our clients as much as it is having the easy ones!

Q. You’re one of the sponsors of our upcoming Midlands Development Conference. Who’re you keen to connect with at the event?

Without wanting to sound overly flirtatious (!), we want to get to know everyone. Of course, the natural answer would be all the developers and landowners please….however as a multidisciplinary practice we thrive on connecting with fellow practices. Our planners work
with other architectural practices (and vice versa), just as our engineers support other planning consultancies. We enjoy working together on projects but equally happy working will other practices to deliver high quality developments that answer the client brief – and crucially support the region.

www.woodshardwick.com

Contact:
Paul Wood
Planning Director – Birmingham
p.woods@woodshardwick.com