TfL's role in future housing
As part of its development programme with private sector partners, TfL will shortly start work on transforming its assets around South Kensington station.
This will improve the experience of the 34 million journeys that take place each year at this important interchange station which serves one of Europe’s biggest museum districts, and a leading education hub (Imperial College London’s main campus, residence halls and the French Lycee are all nearby).
In addition it will redevelop the retail and restaurant offering of the Bullnose Arcade, and regenerate a large section of Pelham Street and Thurloe Street (with Native Land).
Lester Hampson, Head of Real Estate Development at Transport for London joined our discussion panel ‘New Models for Infrastructure-led Regeneration’ at City Hall, London this month.
He spoke alongside L&G Capital, Tibbalds Planning, the Mayor of Middlesbrough and Savills.
Lester explained that TfL has a huge responsibility in how it develops land that it owns (as one of the biggest land-owners in London) but often it is constrained with what it can do. He showed a map of the 10,000 new and affordable homes that TfL plans to deliver within the short term targets of the next five years.
‘How we will be judged is in forty-years’ time’, Lester stated, ‘and for the great place-making that we are involved in and can be proud of.’
‘This is possibly the greatest housing surge that we have planned since the second world war and we have a duty not just in house building but long term management’.
Lester went on to discuss the importance of keeping the five core drivers TfL’s property development strategy in balance. This means that the ‘healthy streets’ agenda, the customer experience of travel across the capital, the maximising of homes and facilitation of jobs, have to be aligned with design excellence and the generation of long term revenue.
His greatest worry he said is that the private sector will not deliver on housing and he hopes very much that the public sector in this area will “step up” to the challenge.
Watch Lester speak in the video clip above.
Lester Hampson, Director of .....