Joint Ventures

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A local authority, group of authorities, county/strategic authority, government agency, or private land owners and/or developers and housing associations with a controlling interest in the land, could establish an LDV by establishing a formal joint venture to share risk and reward in a structured way. This would reflect a mix of land ownerships in the area of a new Garden City, and is an approach that has been used extensive in regeneration projects for many years.

There are various ways in which a joint venture could be structured contractually, and there are many circumstances where this would be appropriate. These include, for example, if the local authority owned some of the land being proposed for the Garden City and/or was prepared to invest monies to meet the cost of infrastructure or could access either grant or recoverable equity funding to do so. Different combinations of land and funding can be input into the joint venture at different times reflecting the availability of capital.

The formal joint venture structure would likely act as the master developer as set out above or could appoint a master developer. Infrastructure providers and contactors could also act as a master developer or form part of a joint venture to do so. Such ‘nested’ joint venture arrangements will inevitable require complex multilevel legal and governance arrangements. In many ways, registered providers (housing associations) are an ideal partner in the delivery of new Garden Cities. They bring both expertise in leveraging affordable housing funding as well as a long term view of sites and stewardship given that they will continue to own stock on site, whether social rented or affordable rent/homeownership.