Gaming the system: plans for Bristol's tallest building and the consultancy swamp
A developer-backed astroturfing company founded by a former advisor to Boris Johnson has been pushing for huge high-rise student accommodation scheme. But they're only one player.
Bristol’s latest high-rise development proposal goes before a planning committee next week. If approved, it will be the tallest building in the city. The scheme is for two high-rise towers to replace the 18 storey Premier Inn building - originally built as an office block in 1972 and re-purposed into a budget hotel in 1999 - that currently stands on the western side of St James Barton roundabout.
The taller of the two proposed towers will rise to 28 storeys in height and provide 442 student bedrooms. The one next to it will be a ‘Co-Living’ block of 18 storeys, providing 132 units. ‘Co-Living’ is a relatively new concept in the UK but involves tenants of city centre blocks - usually young professionals - renting a very small bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and basic kitchen facility. This is connected to a communal space shared by several other residents. The blocks also contain shared amenities such as gyms, cafes and work spaces. While sold as a solution to the housing crisis and the problems of young people having to live in crowded HMOs, critics say that the tiny space standards are detrimental to mental health as well as being unaffordable for many.
Just a few weeks ago, the Greater London Authority (GLA) published a new policy on what it calls ‘Large-scale purpose-built shared living’ (LSPBSL) for London’s development plan. While the language has been softened since the draft document that appeared in 2022 - no doubt through the supplications of the developers and their consultants - it remains clear on the limitations of this type of housing:
“This accommodation type may be used on a transitional basis until residents find suitable longer-term housing. Whilst LSPBSL provides an additional housing option for some people, due to the unique offer of this accommodation type it does not meet minimum housing standards and is therefore not considered to meet the ongoing needs of households in London.”
The developer for the proposed scheme in Bristol, Olympian Homes, are calling it St James Square. The church of St James’ Priory, founded in the 12th century by the Norman magnate who built Bristol Castle, sits just behind the site on the low rise that once overlooked the lost River Frome. Restored a decade ago, the church is Bristol’s oldest building still in use.
Olympian Homes are specialists in Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) and ‘Co-Living’ developments. Their blocks can be found in London, Belfast, Nottingham and Coventry. In Leeds, they are set to build the tallest student block in the world. The investment for this enormous 45-storey project, and another student scheme in York, is coming in part from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel's five largest insurance and finance groups. According to Who Profits, Menora Mivtachim have helped finance settler projects in the occupied West Bank as well as the Israeli military’s ‘City of Training’ bases.
The UK’s ever-increasing student population, coupled with a shortage of housing in its university cities, has led to PBSA being an increasingly attractive option for global institutional investors. And they are increasingly turning to Bristol. According to Bristol City Council’s figures, student numbers in the city have increased by a third over the last five years (17,200), with a similar rate of growth forecast for the next half decade. And 29% of students at the University of Bristol are now from overseas. Their higher fees are eagerly sought after, making them an ever-larger proportion of the expanding student population.
At the same planning committee meeting on 6th March, an application will also be considered for a 20-storey student accommodation and ‘Co-Living’ scheme on Rupert Street, a few hundred yards away from the the Premier Inn site. Directly behind St James’ Priory, another 431-bed student block was completed in 2022.
Suspicious Activity
Concerns have been raised about suspicious activity relating to the Premier Inn proposal on the council’s online Planning Portal. This is where planning application documents are posted for public viewing along with comments received that object to or support particular development proposals.
The planning application was submitted to the council in July last year but by mid-November only 2 comments in support had been posted, and they were from the University of Bristol and the Swedish company Vattenfall, who are installing Bristol’s heat network. This compared to 42 objections, which had been sporadically uploaded over the preceding months. But suddenly, between 22nd and 24th November, 15 comments in support appeared. Then 12 comments in support went up on 22 January, and another 12 on 29 January.
Many of these comments are generic and vague, and generally just consist of a single sentence, sometimes two.
“This sounds very promising and would greatly benefit the community. Having noticed the need for a change and rejuvenation in the area, I think this development will address these issues.”
“We need to address housing needs and alleviate overcrowding.”
“I support this development as there are a lack of homes nationwide.”
Some of the comments don’t apply at all to the development being proposed. For example: “The focus on building homes that can accommodate families is what we need. It gives people like me a chance to live a better life, where basic necessities like suitable housing are met.”
“This mixing of communities, I believe, is essential for a vibrant, cohesive society.”
And another: “It's an opportunity for everyone to have more chances to get on the property ladder.”
But none of these units are for sale, they’re all for rent.
It’s clear that many of the commenters were not familiar with the details of the proposal, and unlike the objections, rarely is there a sense that they have any local knowledge of the city.
Just Build Homes
The source for some, if not all, of these comments in support is an outfit called Just Build Homes. As reported by the Sheffield Tribune in March last year, this organisation cold-call people seeking their support for planning applications, which they then ‘summarise’ and pass to Local Planning Authorities. They also provide a method on their website where you can type in a post code and they will show you local schemes which they can then send in your supportive comment for.
For Bristol, they currently have St James Square, presenting it with a false statement that the development provides “a mix of sizes and types [of homes] for everyone”:
“Olympian homes are seeking approval for 300 much needed new homes, with a mix of sizes and types for everyone including genuinely affordable homes.”
The following page provides a form for you to fill in your details and make a comment:
“Clicking send will sign you up to the Just Build Homes campaign and send the above letter of support to the Bristol, City of Council [sic] planning department.”
An effort has been made to present this as a grassroots campaign of young ‘Yimby’ activists seeking a solution to the housing crisis and coming together as a community of the “silent majority”. But Just Build Homes is run by Shared Voice Ltd, a company founded by Alex Crowley, an advisor to Boris Johnson from his original campaign for Mayor of London in 2008 up until his first weeks as Prime Minister in 2019. And Crowley is a man who’s paid to lobby on behalf of corporate developers through his various PR companies.
He also has form when it comes to astroturfing. Along with employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying firm, Crowley oversaw the ‘Mainstream Network’ series of Facebook ads in 2018 that posed as being run by a member of the public. The campaign opposed Theresa May’s EU withdrawal deal and backed a harder Brexit. The following year he set up the ‘Fair Tax Campaign’, attacking Labour’s tax policy and claiming it would cost “an extra £214 each month” for everyone. ‘Fair Tax’ spent more than £72,000 on Facebook ads during the General Election, according to Open Democracy, but had them removed after the social media platform deemed them to have broken its funding rules on political advertising, which require funding sources to be transparent.
Having been elbowed out of Number 10 by the Dominic Cummings faction, Crowley set up Shared Voice the following year. He also appears on GB News and Talk TV as a pundit.
Shared Voice
One of the four co-founders of Shared Voice is Wyn Evans, a former Liberal Democrat councillor and the founding director of Forty Shillings, a communications agency started in 2011 that works predominantly in property, planning and regeneration. Their clients include large asset managers that invest in new developments as well as some of the biggest volume housebuilders in the country such as Redrow, Countryside, Berkeley, Bellway and Barrett.
While Crowley followed his weathervane boss into the hard-line Eurosceptic camp during the Brexit wars, Evans and another Shared Voice director Cherry Norton (a former Sunday Times journalist) are firmly embedded in the Remainer coalition of the professional overclass. They are both directors of something called The Britain Project, an anti-populist, centre-right venture set up in 2021 with rather mysterious aims and funding sources. Claiming to be a “non-partisan political collaboration”, seeking “a broad coalition in the centre ground”, their advisory board includes a mix of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative politicians, including Rory Stewart and Luciana Berger, as well as media figures such as Phillip Collins and Trevor Phillips. They have close ties to the Tony Blair Institute and Blair spoke at their ‘Future of Britain’ conference in the summer of 2022. It’s unclear what the status of the organisation is now, though the lack of any public pronouncements since that conference suggests that The Britain Project truly is ‘Zombie Blairism’.
The fourth co-founder and director of Shared Voice is Michael Hantman. He is also Operations Director at Forefront, a market research agency that he runs alongside Crowley, who is Strategic Director. One of their specialist areas is property development, where they clearly overlap with the activities of Just Build Homes. They say on the Forefront website:
“You’re trying to deliver a development scheme. You’ve had productive discussions with the local authority to find a solution that meets their policy goals and is commercially viable.
But a small number of opponents are exerting out-sized political pressure that could de-rail the whole project.
What can you do to counter this?
We find the local residents that support your scheme – but haven’t spoken up. Often, they vastly outnumber the opponents. And their opinions are just as valid. We find the arguments that resonate the strongest and are mostly likely to encourage them to participate in the planning process. Providing an effective political counter-weight.”
Importantly, there is no mention here of a shared ambition to bring the cost of housing down and ease the housing crisis. Rather, they will “find the arguments that resonate the strongest and are mostly likely to encourage them to participate in the planning process.” Indeed, some of the developers that pay for the services of Forty Shillings, Forefront, Just Build Homes and Shared Voice, are now under investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority, suspected of sharing commercially sensitive information to limit the supply of new housing and keep prices high. The Times reported this week:
“The regulator has launched an investigation into Barratt Developments, Bellway, Berkeley, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Redrow, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry. Between them, the eight companies delivered about two fifths of the approximately 250,000 new homes built in 2022.”
The Bristol Development Forum
In July 2023, Just Build Homes posted on their LinkedIn page that they had recently spoken at the “Bristol Developers Forum” at Bristol City Council. This is actually called the Bristol Development Forum and it met for the first time in 2019. According to Julian Seymour of Cratus - a communications consultancy that works for developers - it was “founded on an idea conceived between Cratus, Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, former Cabinet member for Housing, Cllr Paul Smith and Jo Davis from Avison Young”. This was “based on the idea that the City Council and developers want a more collaborative way to engage”. Jo Davis from Avison Young, a global commercial real estate services firm with offices in Bristol, personally worked on the planning permissions for YTL’s arena, controversially moved by the mayor from the city centre to the Malaysian conglomerate’s site on the city’s outskirts.
Julian Seymour is another figure who began his career in politics. He worked as a parliamentary researcher for the Conservative MP Andrew Turner, who was forced to resign his seat prior to the 2017 general election following comments he made to an audience of secondary school students stating that homosexuality was “wrong” and “dangerous to society”. Seymour’s time at Westminster was brief and he quickly moved into the world of PR, working for various different consultancies. He joined Cratus in 2018 and is now Managing Director of ‘Planning Communications’.
The most recent meeting of the Bristol Development Forum was on January 30th of this year, and was attended by Bristol City Council’s Chief Planner, Simone Wilding, and Labour councillor Nicola Beech. Beech is Marvin Rees’s Cabinet member for Strategic Planning and worked for developers in her previous job at lobbying and PR firm JBP.
Wilding, who is a former colleague of the council’s Chief Executive Stephen Peacock from the South West Regional Development Agency, had also attended the meeting held at City Hall in July 2023 that included Just Build Homes. Afterwards, Julian Seymour posted a picture of her speaking at the event on his LinkedIn page, writing: “The Bristol Development Forum didn't fail to deliver again. This time around we heard from the new Bristol Chief Planner Simone Wilding on her priorities since taking over”.
Wilding commented underneath:
“Thanks Julian. Indeed excellent event. Great energy in the room. Really impressed with all the ideas and commitment to making inclusive net zero 2030 a reality in Bristol. For anyone interested in joining us at this exciting time: we currently have several opportunities open. Search here : https://www.bristol.gov.uk/jobs for 'planning' to see graduates, senior enforcement and senior development management officer roles. Next week we will also be adding positions for arboricultural and ecology experts.”
Cratus’ clients also include many of those volume housebuilders being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority, such as Bellway, Redrow, Taylor Wimpey, Vistry and Bloor Homes.
It’s striking that Wilding was advertising vacancies for new arboricultural and ecology officers to this audience, particularly considering the controversy surrounding Yew Tree Farm, Bristol’s last working farm, located on it’s south-eastern edge. Last year, at a heated planning committee meeting, Wilding supported the expansion of a council crematorium onto land the farm rents, despite its designation as a Site of Nature Conservation Interest (SNCI) and a council planning policy that states harmful impact to SNCIs will not be permitted. She justified this by saying that harm to an SNCI had to be judged in net terms rather than gross, and that off-site mitigation could result in harmful impact being avoided, even if the unique characteristics of the site were irradicably altered. As pointed out by the Bristol Tree Forum, this was an interpretation that nullified any policy protection for SNCIs and created a development free-for-all.
On the other side of the threatened farm, Redrow have an option for 200 houses on a meadow historically used for grazing cattle, that is also part of the SNCI designation. A rare species of grass fly and endangered dormice have been discovered there. But contractors working for the management agent arrived last week and hacked back at the ancient hedgerow, churning up the field and verges with their machinery, crucially without an ecology expert present. Despite intensive press coverage and the assurance from Marvin Rees in 2021 - days after the publication of his administration’s ‘Ecological Emergency Action Plan’ - that “we should do everything we can to protect Yew Tree Farm”, the Labour Cabinet member for climate, ecology and waste, councillor Marley Bennett, has remained resolutely silent on the issue. But then perhaps it’s no surprise: Bennett is employed by the planning and development consultants Turley, who have Redrow as one of their clients.
Conversation PR
The Bristol-based communications consultancy working on the Premier Inn development for Olympian Homes are Conversation PR. Jo Davis from Avison Young, co-founder of the Bristol Development Forum, is quoted on the homepage of their website, calling them, “The 'go to' lobbyist in the region”. They are also working on the plans to replace the nearby Debenhams building with a 28-storey tower block, as well as Dandara’s residential scheme by Temple Meads station, for which only one of its 437 Build-to-Rent flats will be classed as ‘affordable’ according to the developers.
Conversation PR state on their LinkedIn page that “Much of our work involves helping developers secure planning permission through political liaison, public consultation and media relations.” Like much of the property industry, they rely on the professional merry-go-round between the private and public sector, with their website proudly boasting:
“Each consultant comes from a political, senior officer, consultation or media background. Working alongside founding director Andrew Smith are a number of highly experienced advisers. These include a former cabinet member for place, a senior local authority director and a former council leader.”
The website doesn’t divulge who these local politicians and senior council officers are whose experience and connections they draw on. Andrew Smith is certainly on friendly terms with Gary Collins, former head of Development Management at Bristol City Council who left the council’s dysfunctional planning department in 2023 (it was recently threatened by the government with takeover if it doesn’t improve). As explored here, Collins had been under pressure from senior officers and the Mayor’s Office to get large developments designated “Mayoral Priorities” approved, even ones that went against his own planning judgement. Responding to Collins’ announcement on LinkedIn that he was leaving, Smith wrote:
“…you've helped deliver homes and jobs and investment into this great city, Gary. You've done a really tough job under relentless resource pressure. So well done. And personally you've been open and understanding that developers have to make their case. Ultimately we're all on the same side, seeking the best for Bristol. Good luck. Look forward to our paths crossing again.”
Smith also reposted a post from Collins’ successor Wilding on LinkedIn last year, in which the new Chief Planner had written: “Keen to be part of a great regeneration story in Bristol? We are looking for an experienced Development Management leader closing on 31/10 and a senior enforcement officer ending 19/11”. Smith wrote above:
“Bristol - great opportunity for a seasoned planner. Simone is leading some really positive changes in this fantastic city. Absolutely loads of exciting, major schemes being proposed, including as part of Europe's largest regeneration Temple Quarter. The development industry would enthusiastically welcome experienced planners to work with.”
An investigation by Open Democracy in 2022 revealed that 75 of the most influential councillors in London “had ties to the property industry, including developers, consultants and lobbyists.” The industry’s penetration of the city council in Bristol, through both councillors and officers, is now well-advanced, enabled by a mayor in Marvin Rees who believes that turning the cityscape of Bristol into something akin to Leeds or Birmingham communicates “ambition and energy”. The Premier Inn planning application goes before a committee on Wednesday 6 March and has been recommended for approval by council officers.