When a dozen people – not all of them from Scotland, let alone Glasgow – say the thing that makes Glasgow the greatest city on the planet is Glaswegians, you know that a lunchtime debate about the future of the city is going to be lively.
And such was the case for last month’s debate, held at the Kimpton Blythswood Square hotel, formerly home to the Royal Scottish Automobile Club. Hosted in partnership with Savills, Shoosmiths and RSM, the event gathered experts active in Glasgow and across Scotland to unlock the key ingredients that would enable the city to thrive.
Fresh from putting a new city plan out to consultation, Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council, was keen to show how open her door was to the private sector and how she wanted to bring greater transparency – and honesty – to the planning and development process in the city and city region.
She talked of how Glasgow had previously been very resistant to the private sector paying for a “gold standard” planning service, helping supply additional staff or some funding, but assured the room that was no longer the case.
“A culture that we’re now finally developing is that upfront partnership with the private sector,” she said. “We can’t deliver the transformation that we want for the city centre and the city as a whole without investment partners, without development partners, and so we need to be able to understand what you need from us as well as vice versa. And if you are able to provide a bit of extra support to get what you want from us, then that seems to me to be a win-win for everyone.”
She added: “We are completely up for that kind of collaborative relationship – a Team Glasgow approach – because we can only do the bit that we can do.”
Collaboration matters
The offer of closer collaboration and of transparency about what the council could and couldn’t deliver unsurprisingly went down well with the room.
Matt Willcock, development director at Platform_, wanted to see a lighter touch from council planning departments and a level of trust that a developer knows what it is doing and that it is largely doing it to achieve the same goals as the city.
“If an organisation has got a good track record, they should be trusted to get on with it,” he said. “Because they will be going all out to try and make this the experience that people want. For me, it’s all about light touch, which in an era where the sector is really constrained when it comes to recruitment, a lighter touch would ease the burden.”
Bruce Patrick, head of mixed-use development at Savills, agreed: “If there could be some understanding of the economic challenges, that would be a really helpful start, particularly at the moment as construction costs go through the roof and there is general risk that is impacting on viability.
“I think that interaction is probably the start of the public-private collaboration that we need so much for the city.”
That collaboration is set to come in part through a new development support team set up by the council as it seeks to bring the lifeblood back into the city region.
Bringing life back, encouraging mixed-use and repurposing buildings all forms part of the new city plan, but they are themes that run even deeper than that. Around the table, all 12 experts agreed that for Glasgow to really unlock its potential, it needs to be more than it is today. It needs to bring residents back into the city and it needs to make its daytime activity just as booming as its evening economy is becoming.
“We are seeing footfall return at weekends and in the evenings, actually above pre-pandemic levels,” said Aitken. “It’s the daytime that we haven’t caught up with yet, and my feeling is that we’re not going to recreate the past. We’re not going to have a situation where everyone comes back to the office five days a week, every day buying their sandwich and popping into a shop to pick up something for their tea or whatever. We need more diversity and vibrancy, and we need to look to the future, rather than trying to recreate the past.”
Opening up the economy
The past of which she talks is Glasgow’s obsession with being the second-best shopping destination in the UK. Aitken, of course, wants it to continue to be a leading retail destination (Buchanan Street is one of very few high streets with a close to 0% vacancy rate), but she wants it to be so much more.
London & Scottish senior asset manager Claire Donaldson said bringing a mix of uses more strongly to the city would be a “game-changer”, opening it up to a stronger night-time economy.
More leisure, more student accommodation, more rented and for-sale accommodation – all of which was music to Watkin Jones development director Simon Lovell’s ears.
“Glasgow would be a better city if we could get some more development done,” he said. “We would love to do some more of that in the city. We feel a bit frustrated at the moment, but we think there’s lots of opportunity and we would love to be part of that.”
The desire to be able to deliver more was echoed by Thriving Investments planning and development surveyor William Kyle.
“I wish we had been able to build more in Glasgow,” he said. “I think there are some issues around resourcing in terms of planning and that sort of process, but I think we all need to engage. And this is one of the cities where people can get round the table and discuss things and help move them on.”
Doing more, delivering more, is what everyone around the table wanted for Glasgow, of course, but as Shoosmiths partner Sheelagh Cooley pointed out, the city will need to develop a “magic pill” if it is to resolve not just the local but the national issues with regard to resources when it comes to planning.
The key – or that magic pill – it seems is capital and collaboration.
“What we need more of is capital,” said HFD Property Group managing director Stephen Lewis, “both funding, because funding constraints are really difficult across the public sector, and human capital. More resources are required to take the city to the next level.”
Landsec’s head of mixed-use development, Deborah Freeman-Watt, agreed. “With more investment and really good public-private partnerships, all the potential is there to get Glasgow on fire and re-inject back into the city centre that life and that vibrancy,” she said. “We need to get people excited about and coming to Glasgow, whether you live here or are just visiting.”
“It would be nice to see a lot more investment within hospitality in Glasgow to capitalise on its culture because I think that is very important,” added RSM head of real estate Claire Monaghan. She said the vibrancy and fire could come from bringing more leisure and hospitality back into the city but warned it needed to be done affordably and with the right mix.
Relighting the fire
She cites Edinburgh as a city to learn from. Numerous hotels have opened in Edinburgh but many are at price points that aren’t affordable. And while the space might be being filled and may well attract people, it is also important that visitors can afford to spend on the retail piece of the equation.
Investment comes when investors know there is a return, however. And that is where that open door, the transparency, the trust and the collaborative spirit came to the forefront of the discussion again.
For head of Savills’ Glasgow office David Cobban, trust requires action from both public and private sectors. And trust grows for those looking at the city when public and private sector are telling positive and powerful stories about Glasgow.
“The challenge we have at the moment is that we need to try and get back a bit of fire into the people of Glasgow,” he said. “We need to talk about the good things that are actually happening in the city and make sure everyone knows about these good things, and we need to capitalise on them.”
“The biggest thing we can change is getting back to the lifeblood of the city and being busy and being full,” added Shoosmiths’ head of Glasgow office Barry McKeown. “We’ve got to capture that innovative spirit, the Glaswegian charm of making things happen and how we collaborate between public and private sector. We need to fill that funding gap, make things happen, allow the local authorities to do the job they want to do, and get Glasgow back to what it was, what it could be.”
And the recipe for restoring Glasgow as the greatest city on Earth, concluded EG’s guests, was a truly transparent relationship between public and private sector coupled with that unique and authentic Glaswegian spirit.
The experts
- Susan Aitkin, leader, Glasgow City Council
- David Cobban, head of Savills Glasgow
- Sheelagh Cooley, partner, Shoosmiths
- Claire Donaldson, senior asset manager, London & Scottish
- Deborah Freeman-Watt, head of mixed-use development, Landsec
- William Kyle, planning and development surveyor, Thriving Investments
- Stephen Lewis, managing director, HFD Property Group
- Simon Lovell, development director, Watkin Jones
- Barry McKeown, head of Glasgow office, Shoosmiths
- Claire Monaghan, head of real estate, RSM
- Bruce Patrick, head of mixed-use development, Savills
- Matt Willcock, development director, Platform_
In partnership with
