Inside Property Development

Will the New Design PPG Make Your Deals Easier – or Impossible? With David Birbeck

In this episode, Paul once again sits down with David Birbeck, one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to planning and development. Together, they discuss the government´s new draft Planning Practice Guidance (PPG) and how it should work in practice. David is the CEO of Design for Homes, a Housing Design Awards director, an Honorary Fellow of RIBA, HCA design board member, NHBC councillor and Housing Forum board member. Both he and Paul have decades of experience, so this episode also provides practical advice about how developers can adapt and build high quality schemes that will sell fast. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Liveability, climate, nature, and movement now trump façades and style. Policy is finally shifting from how closely new development mimic what is already in the area to how schemes work for everyday life. * The new PPG replaces a tangle of guides with one much clearer, more visual document. * It is vital that developers familiarise themselves fully with the PPG. If you don´t, you’ll be at a disadvantage when planners and inspectors start quoting it. * Climate, nature, streets, and drainage are meant to be designed together - multi‑functional green and blue infrastructure is now an integral part of policy logic, rather than a nice‑to‑have add‑on. * National space standards still exist, but the draft PPG treats them as a tool for design codes, not a blanket rule. That really matters in places where adding a couple of square metres just for the sake of it at £4,000/m² can completely kill the viability, that applies to 100s of marginal sites. BEST MOMENTS “It's probably more pro-development than it has been for a long time at the moment.” “They have replaced all the stuff about context and history and character and focused instead, first and foremost on livability, and then climate and nature and movement.” “You can have as good a plan in as you like …. people still aren't going to build stuff if they can't sell it.” “Historically, there has been design guidance or talk about design that has no real understanding or bearing on the realities or viability of development.” GUEST AND EPISODE RESOURCES https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-birkbeck-399b771a https://hdawards.org/ https://www.buildingwithnature.org.uk https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/design-and-placemaking-planning-practice- guidance/design-and-placemaking-planning-practice-guidance https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-planning-policy-framework--2 ABOUT THE HOST  Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents. Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know!  Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.   CONTACT METHOD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

- Breaking into Property Development: Early Career Strategies for Graduates

In this episode, Paul sits down with Lucas, a recent Bristol civil engineering graduate, who is considering becoming a property developer. Together, they discuss why everything in development starts with finding and controlling land, how planning policy has evolved to make that both harder and more crucial, and why today’s planning environment might actually be one of the best times to get into development despite a tough sales market. Paul lays out the residual land value logic that underpins every deal and sets out which early-career roles provide the best learning opportunity for would-be property developers. Including, whether to work for large housebuilders or smaller developers, how to approach land directors directly, and the mindset and skills that matter, over time. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Graduate schemes at major housebuilders are still a powerful shortcut into property development. You learn the entire process. * If you want to be more focused, target learning how to find land you can put together a profitable deal for. * Being able to communicate effectively, negotiate and understand people is critical for developers. This is especially important when dealing with landowners and decision‑makers. * Proactive outreach beats simply sitting there and waiting for a vacancy and then applying. Directly contacting land directors and developers with a message that is tailored to them can help you to get in even if there are no advertised vacancies. * Today we are facing huge demand for housing, a more pro‑development planning policy and fewer SME competitors. A combination that creates strong opportunities for those who have taken the time to really understand land and planning. * In a tougher sales market, the margin for error is tiny. Accurate appraisals and disciplined land offers matter more than ever. BEST MOMENTS “Everything has flipped so knowing how to build stuff is just nowhere near enough. You actually need to understand land and planning.” "In all business, and in life, actually, attitude is the most important thing." "It really is all about land and planning. It´s the key." "Most of the best SME developers used to work for house builders." EPISODE RESOURCES Paresh Chandegra interview with Paul - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1RpVHBqxJQ The Housebuilder´s Bible - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Housebuilders-Bible-15-Mark-Brinkley/dp/1916016839 The Art of the Deal . https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-ebook/dp/B01N3U67V8 ABOUT THE HOST  Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents. Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know!  Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.   CONTACT METHOD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Are Small, High Quality Schemes the Smartest Play for Developers Now? – with Steve Morris

In this episode Paul is joined by Steve Morris the co-founder and Managing Director of Linfield Construction, to discuss the viability of building a property development business later in life – especially if you come from a contracting and commercial background rather than following the more typical pure developer route. The conversation covers listed buildings, conversions, contracting margins and planning risk and why so many opportunities don’t stack up once you price the build and contingency properly- As well as how main contractors actually make (or lose) their money, why pre‑applications and consultants don´t mitigate planning risk for you, and why smaller, high‑quality schemes can be a better approach. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Not every opportunity is worth chasing – saying no to most deals is essential; if something only works on heroic assumptions about planning, build, or sales, walking away is a win, not a loss. * Your past experience is an edge. But years in contracting, buying, or surveying won´t protect you if you are not disciplined enough to fully assess risk, choose the right partners and structure deals well. * Look at planning as a business risk, not just a technical process. Pre‑apps, officers, and consultants do not all work in the same way, they are inconsistent. * You need your own planning strategy. Set clear limits on how much time and money you can spend on chasing planning and a willingness to abandon sites that drag you into a hole. * Remember one big job, or one big client, can wipe you out if it goes wrong. A portfolio of smaller schemes and diverse workstreams can be a way to spread the risk. But this approach is still not risk free. * Later in life, you can design a business that actually suits you- Pursuing smaller, high‑quality projects that you are proud of and don´t require you to spend countless nights away from work is relentlessly scaling, just for the sake of it. * Planning policy has never been more pro‑development and competition from SME developers has never been lower, so if you’re disciplined about risk and viability, now is a surprisingly good time to pursue schemes. BEST MOMENTS “I would much rather be doing new build than conversions.” “If you can’t ascertain the risk, then of course you need to stick, you know, a much bigger margin and a much bigger contingency on it.” “Often, pre apps are not worth the paper they’re written on. They’ve basically got no legal or policy weight… people basically give way too much credence to pre apps.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://linfieldconstruction.co.uk ABOUT THE HOST  Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents. Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know!  Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.   CONTACT METHOD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

From Politics to Property Development

Today, Paul sits down with former Wandsworth councillor and Pocket Living land director and the Managing Director and founder of Urban Sketch Nick Cuff. Drawing on his rare mix of political and development experience, Nick explains what a genuinely pro‑development culture looks like, and why most UK councils are not pro-development. They discuss the realities of making small urban sites work, the unintended damage caused by rigid space standards, and why current affordable housing expectations and late‑stage reviews are driving capital out of UK development. If you’re a developer, architect or planning professional trying to get dense urban schemes to stack up in today’s market, this frank, practical conversation will give you plenty to think about. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Pro‑development councils are built, not found - leadership, culture and officer relationships matter as much as policy wording if you want schemes to move. * Small urban sites can deliver serious value, even 100% “affordable” products, when density, smart design and tenure innovation are combined well. * Rigid space standards and one‑size‑fits‑all unit mixes are killing viability and ignoring how real households live, especially sharers and young professionals. * Co‑living and compact rental models remain one of the few viable ways to do dense urban housing, but only in highly amenitiesed, well‑connected locations. * Paul and Nick discuss how and why the Pocket Development model worked. * Nick explains how Urban Sketch is leveraging the shared living trend to create more homes. * Developers and architects must get better at explaining viability and risk in simple terms. Without a clear story and end game, policy will keep loading costs ontoprojects and hardly anything will get built. BEST MOMENTS “If you've got good people, both members and officers, working together, planning's such a huge catalyst for economic growth, for renewal, for improvement to the micro and the macro, street and town environment.” “We've loaded the current planning system with so many Snakes and Ladders that we've lost our ability to navigate it.” “You can't get private money, someone else's money, to commit suicide on behalf of the state's lauded objectives (e.g. affordable housing).” “We are witnessing the great decapitalization of the London and Southeast market. What capital is in the market is seeking, through impairment or exit, to get out, and very limited capital, fresh capital is willing to come back in.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-cuff-4757b220 http://propviews.co.uk ABOUT THE HOST  Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents. Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know!  Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.   CONTACT METHOD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Architect/Developer Relationships with Cameron Straughan

How can architects and developers work together to deliver projects that are financially viable, genuinely regenerative – create schemes like this that actually get built as planned? In this episode, Paul is interviewed by Cameron Straughan, a master’s student in architecture at the University of Bath, who is currently researching the realities of architect–developer relationships. Together they explore how these dynamics influence the design and delivery of housing in the UK. They cover the gaps in architects training, how land values and viability, not greedy margins, really drive what gets off the drawing board and the role planning policy, sustainability standards and build costs are currently playing in the market. KEY TAKEAWAYS * Many architects qualify without spending time on a building site. That lack of hands‑on experience can lead to designs that don´t go through planning, are not financially viable or are too difficult to build. * Developers need to do the land and planning analysis, so they can give a clear, detailed brief to their architect rather than saying “do me a scheme” and hoping the architect solves everything. * Architects are taught a lot about sustainability and regenerative design, but very little about land economics, viability, and planning strategy – which is why many of their ideas never make it off the drawing board. * The misconception that developers are greedy and making huge profits is leading to the creation of ridiculous rules that add prohibitive costs, making many schemes undeliverable. BEST MOMENTS “It's the developer’s job to understand it all and manage it all, not the architects ... don´t assume that they would always know the best thing to do.” “Build costs and different ways and techniques of building things all feeds into the equation when I give an architect an instruction.” “Architects don’t get taught about the development process.” “We can save a whole load of time not arguing and pushing for things that just don't work, if we could all get on the same page a bit more.” CAMERON STRAUGHAN LINK https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-straughan-43545827b/?originalSubdomain=uk ABOUT THE HOST  Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years; experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents. Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know!  Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.   CONTACT METHOD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@InsidePropertyDevelopment This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/