It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to offer up their predictions for the year ahead.
It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been doing this now for over 30 years.
Here we speak to Graham Edward, Managing Director at Edward Architects.
Edward Architects has experienced a healthy workload in 2024 and has enjoyed continued growth including the opening of a new Leeds studio. This was despite a lull over the summer as the property sector awaited the outcome of the General Election and an understanding of how this affected Planning Policy.
We are finding that our residential workload remains strong particularly on Partnership schemes where housebuilders are working with Housing Associations to deliver unit numbers. We see this continuing through 2025 though developers are feeling the pinch as BNG implications and a very slow planning system are harming returns and delivery.
Industrial demand appears to have peaked, but remains healthy. We are also working on the refurbishment of Industrial stock which will be coming onto the market in 2025 adding to the offer available to end users.
Strategic land remains a solid workload for us as these clients take the long term view.
For the Government to achieve its housing target and deliver growth in Construction in 2025, my one big tip is to fund Local Authority planning sufficiently to bring in a ‘mini army’ of experienced planners from the private sector to speed up decisions. The Government should also avoid adding any more red tape or layers of decision making as the planning timescales are directly maiming many SME housebuilders and is deterring property investment.
The current mix of a strong Government, delivery of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPFF) and UK interest rates creeping downwards can only add confidence to the property investment market for 2025. So, in summary, we are more positive about the prospects of 2025 versus 2024 as the market becomes more settled and investable.
At Edward Architects we are excited to face the challenges that 2025 is going to throw at us head on and will spread our specialisms of residential, strategic land and accessible design into new client bases. We are ready for the next phase of continued growth.
