Keith Osborne, editor of Show House magazine, speaks to Joe Antoniazzi, sales and marketing director for Barratt London, to find out more about the company and its success at last year’s WhatHouse? Awards, which won a bronze for Best Regeneration Scheme for its Hayes Village development.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role?
I’m the sales and marketing director for Barratt London, West London division. I’ve been in the industry for about 12-and-a-half years, always with Barratt London, straight out of university. I’ve moved up through the ranks, starting as a sales adviser based in one of our developments, and then moving through into management and then directorship.
My role primarily is to lead the whole Sales and Marketing function, responsible for five live across the Capital. We’re working on five future projects that we’re looking to bring them up to the market over the next few years. I’m also involved in identifying the right land opportunities and working with the planning teams through the design process. I also play a role working with our Customer Service teams. Customer service is really key to us, and it’s what our brand reputation is built on.
Hayes Village won a WhatHouse? Award last year for Best Regeneration Scheme. What is Hayes Village?
Hayes itself is historically quite an industrial area due to its good connectivity by rail and by canal, but over the last 10 to 15 years, has been undergoing a large regeneration. A part of that where we are developing our 1,500 homes is the former Nestle factory. The restoration of this iconic factory spans the Art Deco façade of the main factory building to Wallis Gardens – home to trees that have stood since the inception of the factory. Well-renowned Art Deco architects Wallis, Gilbert & Partners have helped to lead on this project. We have since opened a section of the Grand Union Canal that was formerly inaccessible to the general public.
With Hayes Village, I’d say that the key differentiating factors compared to other projects is firstly that nearly half the development has green open space – the gardens as you enter the site and all the different courtyard gardens that are within the buildings that we’re delivering. Connectivity is probably another differentiating factor, because we are located within a 5-10-minute walk from the Elizabeth line – you can be in the city in under 30 minutes, which is very rare for a Zone 5 location. Also, canalside living is quite key. A large swathe of the development sits on the edge of the canal. We’ve got brand new public realm there, so customers can benefit from that open space and that connection with the water.
Have you had much feedback about your WhatHouse? Award win?
We’re very excited as a team. I think in terms of customers, it’s always good to have another accreditation. We’re always going to sing our own praises but to have an external endorsement is quite key. The team utilise this in discussions with customers, highlighting it. It’s something we’re very proud of. A WhatHouse? Award, I do think, feels like the most prestigious award you can win. It’s probably the most coveted within the property development industry. So hopefully more to come!
Our teams strive towards creating a sense of place that bring joy to their customers. It’s what drives us to come to work each morning and an award like this gives a renewed sense of pride that this effort is part of something much bigger.
You have been involved in this development from a very early stage. Can you remember the first time you saw it and how you’ve seen it transform?
You do tend to forget about it when you’re dealing with it day in, day out, but I first visited this development when we purchased the site, which, if my memory serves me, was around 2016/2017. I visited the original factory building when it had just been vacated by Nestle before they moved their headquarters up to the north of England. And it was quite a bizarre experience, to be honest, because there were still elements of machinery in there, still noticeboards up with staff members names on it. It almost felt like a deserted place, and everything around it was relatively raw, because some of it had been stripped out. You had the bones of the open space, but it still very much felt like an industrial factory. Now it very much feels residential. It’s got a nod to the industrial heritage, but it’s also quite soft and homely in terms of its feel. So I’m quite proud of the work the architects and our internal design team have done to deliver this place.
Successful regeneration isn’t just about the properties – what kind of community engagement has Barratt had since those early days?
We’ve done quite a lot in terms of the early engagement. We’ve invited people back from the previous Nestle factory to see some of the things we’ve been doing. We’ve made some donations to local charities from our Community Fund that has helped towards including homelessness charities and food banks to name a couple. Probably the biggest thing we’ve done is create the gardens at the entrance to the development. Wallis Gardens is actually a public space, sort of more organic community relations. If you drive past here on a Sunday afternoon, you’ll see people playing cricket on the green. They don’t necessarily live here, but are in the wider community and can benefit from that space. We have restored the war memorial that was here for people that worked at the factory, remembering all those who died in the First and Second World Wars.
What are the highlights of the feedback you’ve had from buyers and house-hunters?
The big thing that sticks out quite a lot is the green space and the instant impact of the Art Deco façade, instantly greeting you as you pull into the gates of Hayes Village – a feature which has been retained and restored by Barratt London. I think when customers come here, they come here because they know it’s well connected; we began selling prior to the completion of the Elizabeth line, when Hayes Village was served by Heathrow Connect and local Great Western Railway (GWR) services. Since then, we have seen an influx of people spanning the whole Elizabeth line.
The green space is overwhelmingly probably the wow-factor that people say ‘Wow’. You enter through almost like a gated field, where we have some Victorian railings, and you’re straight into over an acre of green space. And we’ve also got some quite established landscaping with large trees. Another point is around the canal side – it’s rare to have a development that sits on the edge of water. I think value for money is another one. I would never say any development is cheap in London, because we are in London, and it’s a popular place to live. But ultimately, comparing to other well-located locations like Ealing and Chiswick, we really give them a good run for their money at a fraction of the price.
Affordability is a challenge for a lot of customers. We offer a new starter Deposit Match scheme where if customers can get together 5%, we will boost it by another 5%. We have a similar kind of scheme for key workers and the NHS, where we’ll match their deposit up to a certain amount that they put in. And we’ve relatively recently launched Rezide, which is an equity loan scheme whereby a customer can put in 5% and we will provide an intermediary equity loan of 15%.
Do you keep an eye on the wider area and the regeneration that’s going on here?
It’s a long-term project. Hayes town itself has had an injection of cash to give the high street a facelift. And there are a number of developers that have been here. The old vinyl factory is probably the famous one, the ex-home of HMV. Various different developers have built on that site. There are some other developers, not just in Hayes, but in the wider area that spills out towards Southall and other areas that have some quite large projects.
We do absolutely keep in check. And really it’s an area that I think is quite well balanced. It’s not overpopulated with regeneration but enough that is giving the area a new lease of life and a new kind of demographic living here.
Are there other regenerations schemes that Barratt London is currently involved with that might be equally successful as this one?
The one that’s the biggest comparator is our development Eastman Village, which is the ex-Kodak factory, which we’ve been working on at a similar timescale. This kicked off slightly earlier from a planning perspective, but construction-wise, very similar. But that is an ex-factory, which, like the Nestle factory here, was a really big part of the Harrow community. It’s slightly larger in terms of number of homes, with over 2,000 there. But we’re really seeing a very similar thing whereby we’re attracting new people to the area. It is does demonstrate bang-for-its-buck in terms of value compared to locations in Zone 3. That’s located in Zone 5.
Unlike here, there we are not retaining any of the façade but what we have done is retain the original chimney. It’s a well-known landmark and we’ve retained that and actually built an energy centre that serves the whole development. The chimney is an active flu for that energy centre.
The biggest project that that we’ve got coming up, though it’s not quite to this scale, is Bollo Lane on the Chiswick/Acton border. It is actually a joint venture partnership with Places for London, part of Transport for London, and we have a joint venture called the West London Partnership, where we are looking to bring a number of sites, which aren’t as advanced yet, to the market. The benefit of the relationship is that they are usually spots that are right next to Tube stations, so the perfect place for residential development.
