Stephanie Hyde, Chief Executive, JLL UK reflects on how regional economies can be powered through business-led placemaking and economic clusters at UKREiiF

Regeneration can be the catalyst to attract high value sectors, firms and jobs to a particular area, so we must design and develop with levelling up in mind.

Earlier this year the government revealed the plans for its flagship policy: to ‘level up’ the UK and address geographic inequalities. Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove announced 12 ‘missions’ to save Britain’s “overlooked and undervalued communities” before 2030.

Clearly the real estate industry has a fundamental role to play to help empower local people to revitalise and improve their communities and the substantial commitments to funding for regeneration and housebuilding in the Levelling Up white paper underlines this.

Genuine, thoughtful and innovative collaboration between the public and private sectors is essential to levelling up in a sustainable way – as buildings will form a key part of the regeneration and long-term sustainability of our towns and cities.

Every town and city will have a wish-list of the type of businesses and industries that they want to attract to help create globally competitive areas of the UK that compete with international locations rather than each other. The ability to provide the appropriate real estate and infrastructure improvements to attract new institutions and ensure that the existing ones can grow and thrive will be a deciding factor in whether regions, cities and towns succeed or fail.

There are challenges that will need to be overcome to deliver the transformative regeneration needed to level up. Identifying our role and the benefits our insight, expertise and experiences can bring is essential.

We want to play our part to ensure that town and city centres are reimagined in a way that delivers economic, social and environmental value.

Join our session at UKREiiF that will address how we power regional economies through business-led placemaking and economic clusters at 2.15pm on Tuesday 17 May at The Future of Real Estate Pavilion

Author: Stephanie Hyde, Chief Executive at JLL UK