About English Partnerships

• Our key principles
• What we are aiming to achieve
• How we add value
• Our approach

Our key principles

Our overall aim is to achieve high-quality, well-designed, sustainable places for people to live, work and enjoy. We do this by:

• developing our own portfolio of strategic projects;
  
• acting as the Government’s specialist advisor on brownfield land;
  
• ensuring that surplus public sector land is used to support wider Government objectives, especially the implementation of the sustainable Communities Plan;
  
• helping to create communities where people can afford to live and want to live; and
  
• supporting the Urban Renaissance by improving the quality of our towns and cities.

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What we are aiming to achieve

Our programmes are designed to help:

• increase the supply of high-quality affordable housing, and housing for key workers, in areas experiencing housing pressure in the wider south-east;
  
• make best use of the nation’s scarce supply of land by identifying previously-developed land and increasing its supply for development, particularly in the wider south-east;
  
• reduce the stock of low demand and abandoned housing in the Market Renewal Pathfinder areas and other areas suffering low demand for housing, whilst increasing the supply of new and refurbished high quality housing and amenities in those areas;
  
• deliver high-quality sustainable urban regeneration in areas experiencing economic restructuring;
  
• increase the quality and quantity of private-sector investment in housing and regeneration;
  
• set and promote best practice in urban design and construction standards across the regeneration and development industry;
  
• promote the use of Modern Methods of Construction where appropriate; and improve regeneration skills.

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How we add value

We add value by:

• working closely with public- and private-sector partners;
  
• having the resources to work on large and often complex projects;
  
• setting benchmarks for high-quality urban design, construction and environmental sustainability;
  
• acting as a catalyst for development by being involved at an early stage to prepare sites for development by our partners;
  
• devising and encouraging innovative methods of dealing with difficult problems;
  
• actively engaging local communities; and
  
• applying our experience, expertise and skills, particularly in masterplanning, land remediation and regeneration.

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Our approach

We consider it essential to accelerate both the quality and quantity of delivery. To do so, as well as achieving progress in delivering significant outcomes, we shall pursue an increasingly focused and strategic approach.

This will include:

• concentrating on fewer, but more strategic, interventions;
  
• accelerating private-sector investment in all our programmes;
  seeking to attract institutional finance to deliver public objectives with private resources in a true partnership;
  
• improving flexibility by avoiding long-term land commitments;
  
• placing greater emphasis on gap funding; and
  
• ensuring that sites we own are developed quickly, so that we can withdraw as soon as practical and recycle the receipts within our business.

More information about English Partnerships, setting out how we shall acquire new sites, how we work with our external partners, our approach to urban design quality and sustainability, how we work with the community, and where and how we might become involved can be found at www.englishpartnerships.co.uk/about.

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