London Property Club Network Rail Solum Kier Partnership

Kier’s joint venture with Network Rail is “looking seriously” at bringing forward over station developments in London having taken just a weekend to lay the concrete podium for its first such project.

Tim Shaw, Head of Solum (the name for the joint venture), outlined the JV’s progress on its revamp of Twickenham station at our London Property Club event.
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Shaw told delegates that the 134 pre-cast concrete blocks, which have been used to build the third of an acre podium over the south west London commuter station, had been installed in two and a half days over a single weekend. The podium is designed to support a six-storey development, which will feature five retail units as well as 115 flats.

Despite the challenges posed by carrying out a construction project on top of such a heavily used railway line, Solum is “looking seriously” at other over track developments, he said: “That’s the way it has to go. We have to enable over track development. We’ve proved it’s possible to do it and that it’s financially possible. At Twickenham it has been incredibly costly and slow, but we will only get better at doing it. Like any new type of construction, it will get cheaper. With the pressure on land, the potential of over track development is absolutely enormous, not just in London but across the UK.”

But Shaw said that carrying out station regeneration projects is complicated by many rail stations being leased out to train operating companies (TOCs), generally on relatively brief franchises and with little interest in activity that may disrupt the smooth running of services.

He said: “A TOC is not going to invest if it only has a short lease. TOCs are judged on punctuality and customer satisfaction and that mismatch leads to friction, which makes the viability of so many projects very challenging.”

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At Bishop’s Stortford, the JV’s largest site covering 15 acres, where Solum has had to kick off the project by building a new 440 space multi-storey car park, just under half of the 1,000 that are due to be delivered in total at the site. Having obtained consent for the scheme in July, the car park is set to be completed within five months of getting on site, he said.

In order to accelerate delivery of the project, which also contains a hotel and offices, the JV has sold the first 150 housing units to Bellway.

Shaw said that the JV is also in the process of signing up a private rented sector partner to take on the first two blocks of its £200m redevelopment of Guildford station, which is about to get on site after being stuck in the planning process for “nearly eight” years.

But Solum’s fastest selling site is at Walthamstow where it is selling two and a half homes per week, largely on the back of demand from purchasers using the Help to Buy scheme, he said. He added that 70 flats had been completed at the development, built on stilts over the station’s existing car park.

Shaw said that across its portfolio, Solum is working on 14 sites, including a total of 2200 residential units that make up 80% of its total development pipeline. Hotels, shops and care space account for the rest of the floorspace. Solum is also putting £70m back into rail side station infrastructure improvements

And the company is examining off site manufacturing methods to speed up the delivery of its projects which has been hit by Brexit related delays, Shaw said: “It’s hurting business because our contractors cannot get enough workers onto site to deliver the programme. We’re looking at modular off-site construction to speed up the build programme. It won’t be any less costly but will increase speed of delivery.”

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Andrew Williams, Principal Development Manager at Network Rail, said the company’s property arm could no longer rely on the brownfield sites next to railway lines, which have been “relatively easy” to dispose of traditionally.

He said: “Those low-hanging fruit are few and far between now because lot of those options have been disposed.”

He said that during its upcoming Control Period Six, Network Rail aims to dispose of around 250 properties, generating half a billion worth of capital receipts, delivering 10,000 residential units and around £220m of improvements to the rail network.

But Williams said Network Rail is retaining a total of 2,700 commercial properties across the country to provide a sustainable stream income that can support the railway’s development.

As an example of how over track development can be better delivered, he pointed to Euston where the government has agreed to deliver improvements to the station and build the deck that it will sit on.

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