Collaboration key to rail station development balancing railway and commercial aims - summit chair

This year’s Rail Stations and Property summit comes at a time of unprecedented focus on development at stations and railway land around them.

A Government announcement tasking Network Rail with the delivery of 10,000 homes, a more than fivefold increase on its last five-year investment period, was followed by the housing white paper’s call to further increase housing densities at hubs. At the same time, rail travel continues to grow and this growing number of rail passengers also needs to be accommodated.    

Philip Beer, partner, law firm Burgess Salmon, said there was a need to balance the needs of the operational railway against the potential commercial opportunities, and of the wider regeneration aspirations for an area against the commercial aims of developers. “It can be difficult to balance these,” he said. “Aims have to be ambitious, but realistic and with an early and full understanding of the constraints any scheme has to work within.” 

Aims have to be ambitious, but realistic and with an early and full understanding of the constraints any scheme has to work within

Beer, the Rail Stations & Property summit’s chair, suggested that local authorities, as the promoters of wider local regeneration which can improve connectivity between stations and their surroundings, and with the ability to use compulsory purchase powers, take more of a lead role in development at stations. Regeneration has to recognise the different requirements of all parties, he added.

The summit will bring together the different parties at major station regeneration schemes to discuss how they can effectively work together to meet this challenge. Network Rail’s director of property Nigel Escott will, for example, speak of how the rail infrastructure provider is forging collaborations with a number of partners at each site, including the Homes and Communities Agency, York City Council and the National Railway Museum at a 72-hectare site at York Central, whilst a developer's perspective on partnership will be provided by London & Continental Railways.

Jackie Sadek will provide the perspective of a partnership of seven local authorities and two local enterprise partnerships spanning the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire, the Northern Gateway Development Zone; Martin Tugwell of East-West Rail, meanwhile, will represent a consortium of 17 partners working side-by-side in East Anglia and southern England.

The Landor LINKS' Rail Stations & Property Summit 2017 takes place in London on 21 February.