Master Developer Financial Model for Langarth Garden Village
Langarth Garden Village is a new Garden Village community for between 8,000 and 10,000 residents of Cornwall. The scheme has a strong focus on community and sustainability. Cornwall Council has taken a proactive role in planning and delivering the community and in June 2019 was successful in achieving Garden Community status in the Government-backed programme through which it was awarded £47.5 million to build the Northern Access Road. This has been coupled with the Council allocating £159 million to support the development of a masterplan, land purchase programme, infrastructure, and green open spaces.
The Council has established its own Development entity, Treveth LLP, that is undertaking the role of master developer for the scheme. Treveth required support in assessing the project’s viability and deliverability, including needing a financial model that would be capable of bringing together a wide range of detailed information and providing a clear picture of the project’s viability over the next 15-20 years.
The Role
31ten worked alongside RBKC’s corporate strategy team to undertake extensive stakeholder engagement with leads across the council to understand challenges, priorities, and existing approaches to project delivery and oversight. We worked with these leads to identify and define the core cross-cutting activities requiring collective oversight from the Corporate Change Portfolio.
Utilising information gathered in the initial stakeholder engagement and analysis, we developed criteria to determine project eligibility for inclusion in the Corporate Change Portfolio. Projects that did not require this cross-cutting governance are managed through a separate, proportional governance structure under the ‘Council Plan Action Plan’.
A refreshed governance framework was developed to strengthen programme management capabilities and provide the infrastructure to oversee, manage and provide delivery assurance. The framework places emphasis on ‘proportional governance’ to ensure the levels of assurance applied consider the scale, risk, and impact of the project, preventing unnecessary administration, in turn enabling focus on delivery.
Key Outcomes
The 31ten team was commissioned to provide strategic and financial support including producing a bespoke financial model to assess the viability of the Garden Village. A key part of the brief involved ensuring that the model accurately reflected the current proposed delivery structure, as well as ensuring that other delivery approaches could be assessed as required.
To produce the model 31ten adopted an iterative approach, drawing from its knowledge of the project and also working with Treveth and its advisors to ensure the model delivered maximum value. For example, developing an input approach that aligned to the format of cost information and would allow for swift updates.
The model was designed to strike a suitable balance between features and usability, with 31ten identifying useful features such as subplot residual land value calculators, as well as advising when suggested features could hinder the usability of the model.
Alongside the development of the model, 31ten provided ongoing strategic and financial advice on the project.
