Paul Sonabend
Executive Chairman
Published Nov 20, 2024
I was privileged to be invited to the annual award ceremony, which was held at the home of The Duke and Duchess of Fife outside Aberdeen on September 24, 2024, as the sole representative of the finance industry. Looking at the opening paragraph in isolation, I find it difficult to understand why a minnow like Relendex would have been selected to represent our industry. This is a summary of how I came to be guided around Chapelton, the remarkable new garden town being created on a section of the Fife’s ancestral lands, by the duke himself in what can only be described as a North Sea gale that even the hardiest of our group found to be challenging.
When I was first asked to join a steering committee being set up by Ben Bolgar MVO in 2022, it was in the light of the Priddy’s Hard (Gosport Naval Docks) development, which Relendex financed, having won the prize for the UK’s best sustainable development. We had also come to what was then the Prince’s Foundation’s attention as a result of our involvement with other environmentally conscious housebuilders.
The King's Foundation and Relendex
The King's Foundation wanted someone from the finance industry who would understand their objectives and the challenges faced by SME housebuilders. Relendex fitted the bill. To understand why, here is their primary objective in a nutshell: To build beautiful places for people to live and work.
The King's Foundation's objective is to dissuade major landowners from taking the easy option of selling their land to a national housebuilder which would produce a standardised product and contribute to urban sprawl. Instead, the aim is to encourage them to invite the best of the SME regional housebuilders to co-develop the land under the supervision of a master developer.
Each developer would provide housing and/or commercial buildings to the highest standard, according to their own specialisation. This is the Foundation’s ultimate objective, but ensuring that a cohort of SME developers has the skills to collaborate in this manner is a monumental task.
The Challenge
How does an independent housebuilder, building say 10-25 homes a year, develop the skills and resources to join a major multi-phase, multi-year new town development?
It was clear that to achieve this aim, considerable resources would have to be put into place to support aspiring SME housebuilders.
The Regional Building Hubs Initiative
The King's Foundation assembled a wide range of experts to address the problem, which became known as the “Regional Building Hubs Initiative.”
Relendex was invited, along with Close Brothers, to join the steering committee. Ben Bolgar MVO and his team realised that Relendex’s close relationship with our borrowers means that we not only understand their finance needs, but we have also developed an understanding of their challenges and the weaknesses within their organisations that the Regional Hubs will need to address if they are to be capable of joining a major collaboration.
Ben and his team also came to appreciate my extensive commercial expertise and have asked me to help devise the strategy for implementing the Regional Hubs. CLICK HERE TO WATCH
Chapelton and the Award Ceremony
All this led to me being:
- Asked to stay in the Fife’s home
- Invited to contribute to the discussion panel at the annual awards gathering
- Taken on a very wet and blustery 2-hour tour of a remarkable new town (Chapelton)
Below you will find a link to Ben Bolgar MVO's excellent Building a Legacy video, which introduces the initiative to major landowners. CLICK HERE TO WATCH
Relendex’s Commitment
Relendex is proud to have been included, and we feel passionately that the initiative must succeed so that the UK will provide beautiful places to live and work for future generations.
