Building assets, developing skills
By the late 70s, the Trust's funding needs were acute. It had to pay its way, maintain land, buildings and community facilities, service interest on loans and fund an expanding building programme. Sources of funding were diminishing as its running costs grew.
Charities were switching grants to new ventures and public expenditure was being cut: With 40% of its running costs already met from rents received, the Trust was keen to achieve self-sufficiency. A survey commissioned from Wilks, Head and Eve showed the Trust it could be standing on its own feet from the mid-80s. But capital for proposed developments and help with the next ten years' running costs were needed.
Serious money
The Council had expected the Trust to make its way in the world. It soon became clear the policy was unrealistic. To attract outside grants, the Trust needed continued Council funding – more than the £25,000 start-up grant and the waived £16,200 ground-rent (its share of the rent due to the Council). Under pressure, the Council was increasingly drawn in as a funder: first a £1500 grant for sports events; then a £10,000 grant for the Maxilla Social Club; next a loan of £75,000 for the charity offices in Thorpe Close and a guarantee on the Malton Road mortgage. By 1979 it was contributing over £40,000 towards the annual running costs. But the Trust needed more.
A business plan was put to the Council. 'The Trust wanted self-sufficiency', says Matland, ‘so we produced a ten year plan that showed if Council funding increased, it would plateau and demands would be reduced to nothing. The alternative was to keep us on a shoestring, constantly on the Council's grant-making agenda'. The Town Hall showed a marked change of attitude under the new leadership of Nicholas Freeman, whose strategic thinking about the Trust meant that when other organisations were facing cuts, the Trust got a dramatic increase in revenue and capital support. In 1980, its annual grant rose to £75,000. The next year it got its largest ever capital loan – over £lm. Throughout, Roy Webber, Chief Executive of the Council from 1979, gave consistent and intelligent support on a wide range of issues affecting the Trust. He was no bureaucrat, and shared the vision of what the Trust could become.
Portobello Bays
Now backed by serious Council money, the Trust was at last in a position to go ahead with a major building programme. The fourteen motorway bays on either side of Portobello Road, home to one of London's liveliest and best known street markets, were in a key position. Local feelings ran high whenever new proposals came up. Since the earliest plans of the Motorway Development Trust, architects had envisaged a town square surrounded by shops between Cambridge Gardens and Portobello Road. Consultation with the public was going to be an essential part of the three phase development. Its success or failure would depend on the Trust's reputation as a developer with the interests of the community at its heart.
The Portobello Bays strategy was evolved under David Wilcox, the new and energetic young Chair who, as Planning Correspondent for the Evening Standard, was familiar with planning issues and planning battles across London. Design was by the Franklin Stafford Partnership; as community architects for the scheme, consultation was part of their brief. Feasibility studies and draft plans were put forward and modified in the light of comments from working parties and public meetings. Interest groups who wanted to work up their own schemes could get technical advice. They had to put their case at public meetings so the arguments could be sifted and it would become clear who the serious players were. The debates generated new uses and new users.
The development of an effective framework for consultation illustrated the new confidence at the Trust. It now had a mechanism for incorporating its existing informal users into the scheme – Acklam Road adventure playground, the Free Shop, the rent-free charity stalls. And it could be sensitive to new needs such as office accommodation for community groups and commercial premises for local businesses.
Packaging the scheme
The building package was structured to provide a mix of commercial and community spaces. It quickly became clear to the parties involved in the consultations – local business people needing premises alongside others who wanted community facilities – that rents from the commercial side would provide up to 90% of the annual repayments on loans raised for the whole development. It was a way of resolving conflicting preferences; politically or financially it would be extremely difficult for one half of the scheme to be developed without the other.
The Portobello Bays were developed in three phases. Phase 1, carried out between 1980 and 1981, involved Acklam Road on the east side of Portobello Road. Light industrial workshops, built in three bays, provided workspace, jobs and an income for the Trust. In the adjoining five bays, strenuous lobbying (notably by Trust community representative Herbert Bukari), and a grant from the Council, got the adventure playground upgraded with a play pitch, games rooms, arts and crafts facilities and workshops.
Middle class ponces
Phase 2, carried on into 1982, straddled Portobello Road, providing nine commercial offices and nine charity offices for community groups about to be made homeless by the demolition of the last houses in Acklam Road. The scheme included four shops in Portobello Road, and an arcade of craft workshops at Portobello Green, a youth and community squash club and a paved covered market area for weekend traders and outdoor events. Despite the extensive consultation process, a group of local traders and residents lobbied the Trust at the last minute with a range of grievances; there was too much commercial development, rents in the new scheme would be too high and 'middle-class ponces' in the Trust were turning Portobello Road into another Covent Garden. The Trust agreed to a local opinion survey which showed a healthy majority happy with the scheme. It went ahead largely as planned but with some adaptations, notably the provision of the permanent market canopy for the traders now re-sited next to Portobello Green.
Civic Trust Award
National endorsement came in 1983 when the Portobello Green development won a Civic Trust award. In October 1984 the Prince of Wales unveiled a commemorative plaque. Phase 3, from 1984 to 1985, completed the scheme with the demolition of the remaining houses in Acklam Road, pedestrianisation and landscaping, and an extension to the Acklam playground for children to play in the open, out of the shadow of the motorway.
Encouraging business
When Westway was built, densely residential North Kensington offered little space to the business community. As the Trust got further into commercial development it was often criticised for 'property speculation' despite the additional benefit being created – spaces for local jobs. For the Portobello Bays scheme, the Trust widened consultation by inviting potential commercial tenants to join the debate. They did not turn out to be 'pin striped, cigar puffing rip-off merchants', but plain speaking independent workers with local connections wanting to move businesses from leaking mews garages and tatty railway arches. Their presence and level-headed arguments substantially dissolved the earlier suspicions.
Early Trust properties proved difficult to let. But as the area improved so did the take-up. 'The Trust has made a significant contribution to generating business premises in the area' says Trust Director, Roger Matland. 'Other developers would see our properties being let and move into North Kensington. Derelict buildings have been brought back into use, and that's music to a lot of people's ears'. With 200,000 square feet of space developed, the Trust is now landlord to 96 businesses providing 750 jobs.
Totters on the move
Under the Westway roundabout other commercial tenants were getting established. The Trust had completed new stables in 1979 for the totters – rag, bone and 'any old iron' recyclers with a sound ecological trade going well back into the nineteenth century and long an established part of North Kensington's economy. Prior to the motorway, they stabled horses and sorted goods in cramped mews premises familiar from 'Steptoe and Son', some of whose location shots were filmed in the original Notting Hill totters' yards. Westway swept away their old stables. When the Trust inherited their temporary iron shacks, vulnerable to burglary and vandalism, a free survey carried out by Knight, Frank and Rutley drew attention to their useful recycling work: decent premises for the totters made economic sense and the adjacent land could be developed for other compatible uses. With £277,000 raised by grant and Council loan, the Trust carried out the Stable Way development – 52 brand new stables, five small industrial units and seven small yards for industries from scrap metal to car repairs. Some totters were happy to move into the new stables but others objected to the rent. A long dispute followed with the totters on one occasion driving to Buckingham Palace to seek the intervention of the Queen. Her Majesty requested the Secretary for the Environment to look into the matter. It was resolved when the totters agreed to form themselves into an association to take a collective lease. 'We've had some right battles with the Trust' says Alf French, the Westway Totters Association secretary. 'Now we've got a working understanding. They don't bother us and we don't bother them' and the rent gets paid. "Consultation and decision-making do not rest upon co-operation in an amiable atmosphere. Conflict and negotiation are part of the everyday tapestry of Trust life”. From a paper by Frederick Stafford, architect to the scheme, 1979.
Westway Sports – 10 years and £2million
Next door to the totters' stables was the big eight-and-a-half acre site under the Westway roundabout, where the Trust planned a major sports and recreation centre. The 1972 Sports Weekend had set the ball rolling, focusing public attention on the sporting potential of the site and showing the demand – 5,000 young people took part in the 20 sports laid on. And a competition run by the Royal Institute of British Architects demonstrated how parks and gardens could be created alongside. The Trust knew it would be a long haul to work up plans for the big site and assemble the funds to carry them through – it took ten years and £2 million.
The partnership arrangements have been impressive, a good example of how the Trust packages funds. The Manpower Services Commission provided the extensive environmental improvements; the Inner London Education Authority funded pitches and changing rooms and a worker to coordinate use by local schools; materials and equipment were paid for by the Royal Borough, Campden Charities and the Trust. The Sports Council, keen to help put sports on the map in Kensington and Chelsea, has nurtured the project throughout, regularly funding equipment and pitches. It based Action Sport at the Westway for three years, before the Royal Borough took it on and developed its own sports development team.
Funding education – the future?
In the North Kensington Playspace Group's early plans, education projects figured prominently. The group had sought and obtained the ILEA's support from the outset. Local schools had very limited recreation facilities and the ILEA had to bus children to playing fields outside the borough. Seeing what the Trust was now making of its open space beneath the roundabout, the ILEA made an open-ended commitment to build a sports centre, complete with pavilion, multi-use pitches, cricket nets, athletics tracks and jumps. The cost was over half a million pounds, met in full by the ILEA who worked out a long term agreement with the Trust – now taken on by the Royal Borough (the new education authority). Local schools use the centre by day, with evening and holidays retained for community users and local teams. Future financial arrangements look more complex; current government policy on local management of schools is likely to make its impact.
Greening the motorway land
In an employment project worth over £200,000, the Manpower Services Commission provided the bulk of the labour for landscaping and developed a people's garden and a large grassed space, a bicycle workshop and speed way, a kickabout area, pony riding arena and jogging track. Under the MSC's Community Enterprise scheme, the Trust extended its landscaping to establish Maxilla Gardens and Portobello Green. With the greening of the motorway land the Trust was putting the finishing touches to its schemes, creating open space amenities alongside completed buildings.
Profiting the community
The Trust's main building programme came to an end in 1989. Over 15 years it completed 16 major projects at a cost (April '91 prices) of nearly £16 million, raised through a mixture of grants and loans. By 'twinning' commercial and community developments, the Trust found an effective formula for developing its land. This has become the key for unlocking grants and loans from charities, statutory bodies and the private sector. By showing how it could generate income and provide long term estate management, the Trust gave funders confidence that resources would not be sunk in a bottomless pit, and loans and mortgages were secure. It now provides the basis for the Trust's financial self-sufficiency.
Because of the recession of the early 80s, initial progress towards its goal was slow and the cost of bankruptcies and un-let space had to be written off. In 1985 the situation improved dramatically with 99% of Trust premises filled. In 1986 the Trust made a small surplus for the first time and in 1987 received its final annual support grant from the Council. Income from rentals is now over £800,000 and self-sufficiency has at last been achieved. In a good year the Trust generates enough of its own income to balance its books. Any surplus goes to making grants to over 50 community organisations each year and to helping new projects.
Hard skills
In the process, the Trust has had to acquire the skills of a property developer – conceiving schemes, briefing professionals, managing contracts and raising capital. Schemes presented to funders have to make hard economic sense. Costs have to be balanced with income, buildings marketed, tenancies drawn up, rents and debts collected. But unlike a property developer's usual habit, this hard-nosed approach is not taken to enable the developer to sell and move on. 'Of course, we could have brought in a property developer' says Matland, 'or property management could have been put out to an estate agent. But by undertaking the process ourselves we've kept the profits in the community. “We've been keen to show that the voluntary sector can own, develop and manage land and become self-sufficient in the long run”.
Success has depended on the Trust's ability to be strategic and tough in defending its interests. 'Never take no for an answer' has been one of the Trust's mottos over the years, as it learned to make its way by arguing its case with all-comers. When Development Land Tax was introduced it could have devastated the Trust. On a £l million building contract, £100,000 tax was due to be paid on the day the contractor started on site. The Trust, advised by leading legal and accountancy experts that nothing could be done, took its own case to the Inland Revenue and won an exemption. A year later, new legislation exempted all charities from the tax. The Trust's original ground lease was for 70 years. With potential mortgage lenders wanting to see at least a 99 year lease, the Trust successfully argued the case with the GLC and the Royal Borough for an extension to 120 years, and for exemption from the consequential stamp duty charged by the Inland Revenue.
Cost-consciousness is also applied to monitoring project expenditure. When the cost of running the up-graded Acklam Hall became a drain on resources, the Trust sought alternatives. It found promoter Vince Power who knew the business better, drew up a management agreement with him and wiped out the deficit. As 'Subterania' it then operated as a successful West London music venue with weekly slots retained for community use (many years later it changed hands again and was re-named first as Neighbourhood, then simply 12 Acklam Road and finally Supper Club). Savings allowed the Trust to put more money into grants for local organisations.
The Trust has learned to recognise its limits. It prefers to stay lean, rather than growing and controlling all activities on its land. It encourages independent projects with knowledge and experience in areas it does not have. And to make sure it has access to the advice it needs it makes selective use of independent professionals – surveyors, lawyers, architects, engineers, accountants and land agents. With hindsight, independent professional advice from day one might have done the Trust a power of good.
"A key characteristic of the area is the determination of the local residents to maintain it as a local community. Grand schemes and comprehensive plans have proved unacceptable and inadequate." – Frederick Stafford, architect.
Shaping up for the 90s
Acquiring hard skills has created new opportunities. At the Trust, it's policy first, money second. 'If the policy is right', says Matland, 'we go out and find the money'. The new Fitness and Snooker Centre on Portobello Green is an example; the Trust gave the go ahead to build it with only two thirds of the money raised. If the Trust delayed, costs would go up because the contractor had the right to re-assess his price. It was a commitment based on the Trust's conviction that the project was right. In the enterprise culture of the 90s, with diminishing government funds, it gets tougher for voluntary organisations. Marketing, customer care, contracts and value-for-money are the new buzzwords. It is just as well that, as a local developer, the Trust has learned to make its own way.