Heathrow airport is launching the UK’s biggest planning consultation exercise this week, one of the airport’s senior directors has told our London Major Developers Conference. Emma Gilthorpe, Executive Expansion Director at the UK’s biggest airport said that the 10-week exercise will kick off on Wednesday, with over 2m households set to receive leaflets and 40 public events to be held – with a view of engaging with over 13m people who live in the area affected by Heathrow’s flightpath.

Emm Gilthorpe said that the two key documents being consulted on covered physical infrastructure and airspace, with an additional phase of consultation taking place at the end of this year or early 2019 on the final preferred masterplan. This will take place after the vote on the government’s draft National Policy Statement for Heathrow which is expected to take place in the House of Commons before the summer.

Paul Duffree, Director of Property at The Royal Household Estates, said that the Queen’s estate management arm was ‘keen to refresh’ its construction supply chain. Once the event finished Paul Duffree engaged in numerous conversations with the audience and delegates before attending the VIP Dinner post-event to speak further about possible future partnerships.

The refurbishment of Buckingham Palace, which is set to cost £365m over 10 years, has been rapid for a project of its kind, accordingly to Paul Duffree. He said: ”We’ve gone from options to starting on site in two and a half years including sign off from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The building will remain as the Queen’s London residence whilst the palace’s mechanical and engineering plant are replaced with work set to begin this summer.”

The Royal Household are running the project itself because contractors had been reluctant to shoulder the risks involved in such a project with Paul adding that ”it’s a difficult job and the risks of getting it wrong could be bad for their image.”

John Knevett, Executive Director at A2Dominion, was also speaking – and he expressed doubt around the governments target to built 300,000 new homes a year. He said: ”I would like to think we can get to 200,000 to 220,000 homes per year but I don’t think we’ll get to the Holy Grail of 300,000.”

That being said he thought there was ‘no reason’ as to why the largest registered providers, such as themselves, couldn’t increase their output to between 60-70,000 homes per year collectively with him adding: ”The next five to ten years will see RPs being much more part of the solution, using their balance sheets. You are going to get a much more blurred line between housebuilders and big housing associations”. A2Dominion recently has such a project, with their £20m investment in Nicholas King Homes.

Thanks to an easing of funding restrictions John Knevett said he hoped that the medium sized regional housebuilders would be able to increase their output from 150-400 houses per year. And he added that their planned merger with Radian Homes would create a new registered provider with around 60,000 homes and greater capacity to switch its output from for home ownership to other tenures, depending on the state of the market.

Lastly we heard from Colin Harvey, Head of Property Programme Delivery at Jaguar Land Rover, who said that the company faced a ‘huge potential impact’ from Brexit, given that 80% of their vehicles are exported. He said: ”Please help us get a softer transition. As a major automotive manufacturer in the UK, that has massive implications for investment if we don’t get it right.”

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