‘It will take two decades to fix the housing crisis’: The developer reshaping south London | Construction industry
A new “town centre”, a cluster of four buildings with towers of varying heights, is springing up at Elephant and Castle, one of the busiest junctions in south London, to replace the demolished 1960s shopping centre.
Residents and local traders have expressed fears it will turn into “another Westfield with all sorts of chain shops”, as local Liberal Democrat councillor Maria Linforth-Hall put it. But Rick de Blaby, chief executive of Get Living, the company behind the project – which has built and manages 4,000 rental homes, including the former Olympic Village in Stratford – is adamant this won’t happen.
“I can see why people are concerned about that, but I don’t think that’s where we want it to end up,” he tells the Observer from the “trunk room” in the temporary site office, overlooking a cluster of red cranes and a vast building site (there is also a “tusk room” – in keeping with the elephant theme).
“You need a few recognisable names that anchor your scheme. But we have a vision for bringing in far more independent local traders that really bring a character and a definition to the place. Otherwise, it becomes another slightly formulaic shopping centre.”
He points to Get Living’s nearby Castle Square centre, which has 27 small traders, including 19 who had been based in the previous Elephant and Castle complex. Demolished in 2021, it was one of Europe’s first large indoor shopping centres when it opened in 1965. Its distinctive statue of a pachyderm carrying a tower – constructed in the image of an older sculpture at a coaching inn after which the whole area is named – will go on display at the new site, alongside nearly 1,000 homes, shops, restaurants, offices and a cinema, as well as a new campus for the London College of Communication. It is due to be completed in 2026.
After local opposition and Southwark council’s rejection of its initial plans, Get Living revised its proposals to include more affordable housing, including 116 socially rented flats, up from 33, and affordable shop rents for at least 10% of the units.
The company was set up in 2013 by a client fund of the UK property group Delancey and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Then last year, Qatari Diar’s 22% stake was bought out by Aware Super, an Australian pension fund. The Dutch asset manager APG and an investment vehicle led by Oxford Properties and Delancey own 39% each.
The firm offers three-year tenancies with a resident-only break clause, with no fees or security deposits, and with rent reviews based on consumer price inflation. De Blaby, who joined Get Living in 2017, says: “The vision was: can we create a business that seeks to disrupt a slightly dysfunctional private rental market?”
Get Living charges an average monthly rent of £2,700 in London, with studios at £1,945. This compares with £1,195 for a one-bedroom flat and £1,995 for a three-bed at its Salford site in Manchester, while its homes in Maidenhead have just launched starting at £1,550 for a one-bed. It’s not cheap but in return tenants get a concierge, an on-site maintenance team and amenities such as a gym and free wifi.
Average private rents in Britain have risen to record highs, hitting £1,291 outside London and £2,633 in the capital in the first quarter, according to the property website Rightmove. Official figures showed the average private rent rose by 9.1% in the year to March.
Scotland temporarily capped rent increases at 3% between September 2022 and last month, but De Blaby believes rent caps do not work, suggesting they deter investors. He argues that the underlying supply issue needs to be addressed: “The big story is: how can we get on and build more homes?”
He is calling for a comprehensive plan to fix the UK’s housing crisis. “Whoever’s in government, start by really being able to articulate what our grand vision is for housing in the UK, because if we can create something that is inspiring and positive … we’ve got a chance of changing the mindset of a lot of people to be pro-development, rather than anti-development.”
At the Olympic Park in east London, Get Living took over the former athletes’ quarters, which the government’s Olympic Delivery Authority turned into flats after the 2012 Olympics ended, buying them for around half of what the village cost to build. It now manages 2,445 rental homes at East Village, while 1,379 affordable flats are managed by the housing association group Triathlon Homes.
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In January, a court ruled that Get Living, as the owner of East Village, must pay £18m to upgrade fire safety standards at five of the 66 blocks, seven years on from the deadly Grenfell Tower fire. Leaseholders in shared ownership properties managed by Triathlon have been unable to sell their flats since the defects were discovered in 2020, and Triathlon brought the lawsuit. Get Living says it was not involved in the design, build or retrofit of the properties, and that it will appeal.
“The first-tier tribunal recognised that liability was not synonymous with fault, so they were saying it wasn’t our fault, but we were still liable under the terms of the Building Safety Act,” says De Blaby.
“And there was also a comment that those with the broadest shoulders should pay, and they deemed that we had the broadest shoulders. But Get Living are the custodians of millions of key worker pensions [as it is backed by pension funds].”
De Blaby says a further 33 blocks need fire safety repairs and “there’s more exposure to go for all of the other buildings” that still need to be assessed. “We in turn are going to be forced to litigate all of the contractors that built those buildings, below the government’s own regulations at the time. We have been pretty shocked at some of the standards to which those contractors have built in terms of missing fire-stopping and insulation and so on.”
He stresses that “no one lives in an unsafe home in East Village” and that he is “empathetic to the people who are impacted”, promising to fix all the fire defects “within the next couple of years”.
De Blaby grew up in the Midlands and went to one of Britain’s oldest public schools, Bromsgrove near Birmingham, as a day boy “because my parents couldn’t afford the boarding fee”. His mother took a job as a receptionist for an estate agent to pay the fees (his parents divorced during his teens). De Blaby did holiday jobs with estate agents and architects, and wanted to be an architect. “I was often messing about drawing buildings or making buildings out of Lego,” he recalls.
Following his estate management degree, at Oxford Polytechnic, now Oxford Brookes University, he got a couple of jobs in London, “colouring in plans and making tea”. His first proper job was at the developer Trafalgar House, where he “learned to be a developer for 10 years”.
He ran the commercial development and mixed-use regeneration activities of Countryside Group before landing his first CEO role at MEPC, a former FTSE 100 property developer that is now owned by the manager of the British Telecommunications and the Post Office pension funds. He then worked with private equity when he turned around United House Group and sold most of the business.
Get Living is part of the UK’s nascent build-to-rent sector, which accounts for less than 2% of housebuilding but will grow to 15%-20% in the coming years, De Blaby predicts. “It’s got a really important role to play in the UK housing market. It has the ability to deliver affordable as well as market rented housing and innovative things like co-living. It’s about attracting global capital to really try and address the housing market that we’ve got.”
However, he warns: “It will take two decades to fix the housing crisis, and I fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
CV
Age 64
Family Married, three adult sons.
Pay Not disclosed.
Education Bromsgrove School, BSc in estate management at Oxford Brookes University.
Last holiday Family skiing trip in Tignes, in the French Alps.
Best advice he’s been given “In any confrontation or disagreement, give people an honourable off-ramp.”
Biggest career mistake “Working with people who have little accountability.”
Phrase he overuses “What’s the proposition?”
How he relaxes Surfing, windfoiling and swimming – “I love my time on the water.”
