As multidisciplinary services consultancy Altair becomes a fully-fledged member of Future of London, we talk to director TOM DEWEY about the viability challenge and how local authorities can speed up development.
Altair is an established consultancy specialising in property and regeneration. You may already know some of the Altair team as regular attenders at Future of London events. Now they have taken the plunge and signed up as a member organisation.
To find out why, we met director Tom Dewey – a Future of London leadership alumnus himself – whose career-long passion for creating vibrant places is rooted in his upbringing in post-industrial Wolverhampton.
“While I was growing up in the Midlands I came to learn in my early years that not everyone had a great place to live or a brilliant town centre to go to,” he says. “That’s a fire that stays with me – and something I still want to help change.”
Altair’s collaborative and embedded approach
Tom is a Director of the development and regeneration workstream of Altair, but the consultancy delivers property services across housing, public sector, and charitable organisations. The consultancy also advises clients on governance, strategy, transformation and digital.
Tom says their collaborative approach is a distinctive part of their ethos, and Altair frequently embeds consultants in client teams. “We’re happy to be part of the team rather than working at a distance,” he says, “and we want to create lasting value for our clients.”
This approach ensures that Altair’s involvement is a shared journey with the client. “We shouldn’t be there forever,” he continues. “We should be there to initiate, bring teams and projects together, provide that knowledge, assurance and quality, deliver defined outputs and then leave.”
Tom notes that one of the most rewarding aspects of this model is helping to grow a team from within.
“When placed within an organisation, it’s so rewarding to help build teams, including the recruitment of locally-based apprentices,” he says. “It’s great to see the career journey of young people as they find their calling and become valued members of a team. Hopefully we’ve left an impact on the project and the organisation.”
Navigating complexity and the inevitable financial constraints
In today’s climate, some public sector clients are operating with “skeleton” resources and facing budgetary constraints, but remain just as ambitious for their place. The firm specialises in helping clients navigate these challenges by providing structure and the expertise needed to move projects forward.
“Sometimes there’s a mismatch between ambition and reality,” Tom says. “There can be a skills gap too, so we help provide a bit of structure and expertise to help meet ambitions.”
Tom describes their role as sometimes being a “development navigator”, a term coined from his own experience of working in local government, where taking proposals through the democratic decision-making process can be a mission.
The return of housing company fortunes?
Altair has worked closely with local authorities during a period when council housebuilding hit a post-war low but then started to return over the last few years.
Tom’s first experience of council housebuilding was in Barking and Dagenham, while working for the Homes and Communities Agency (now Homes England) on east London projects, including the regeneration of the Gascoigne estate in Barking.
At that time, Barking & Dagenham Council was a pioneer of arms-length development companies. While at Altair, Tom returned to the area as a development consultant to the council via Be First, gaining firsthand devco experience.
“Local authorities have pioneered new ways to deliver housing but along the way learned some difficult lessons,” he says drily. “But if you look at recent announcements from the government around delivery, reinvigorating council housebuilding features along with a number of other delivery routes such as joint ventures and investment partnerships.”
So will we see a revival of local housing company fortunes?
“I think it’s definitely something to watch if structured correctly – though they are just one potential mechanism, depending on the circumstances.”
Showcase projects in London
Altair’s work can be seen in boroughs across London, where they are helping to deliver new housing, manage regeneration programmes, and build governance frameworks. The firm’s expertise spans the entire development lifecycle, from finding a site and securing funding to asset management.
A prime example is their long-term involvement in Haringey. Altair initially worked with the council to establish a “development procedures manual” to create a more effective internal framework for new homes delivery.
From this initial engagement, the relationship evolved, with the Altair team providing project and programme management support for Haringey’s wider housing delivery ambitions.
One of the most significant successes, according to Altair, has been the Ashley Road Depot scheme, with a government housing minister heading to Haringey to unveil the completion of the first phase of housing that delivered 91 Passivhaus homes.
Tom has also worked at scale on two garden community projects on the outskirts of Greater London at Hemel Garden Communities and Harlow and Gilston Garden Town, as well as district and country councils across the country.
A career shaped by place and people
Tom describes his career as a “sequential journey of skills,” from joining the graduate scheme at English Partnerships in 2005 to working in a local authority, a housing association, and finally into consultancy at Altair, after Pod Consultancy joined the group in 2018.
This varied experience has given him what he describes as “genuine and authentic experience” that he brings to every project. Back to his childhood, there is also a connection with the important role that the council-run youth club played in his teenage years.
“I went to a place with a little recording studio project and met loads of different people and was exposed to lots of different experiences,” he says. “Now that provision doesn’t necessarily exist. So when we’re designing new places, we know that safe homes are important, but it’s also about encouraging people to interact with each other.
“That is so important in the current climate. We have a responsibility to create places for younger generations where they’ve got the opportunity to interact without the need for a screen.”
An active partner in the Future of London
Altair’s decision to join Future of London’s membership builds on a long-standing relationship. While at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Tom graduated from the first Future London Leaders programme in 2010, which he found to be a valuable experience for gaining external networks and working with a mentor. He has been a champion of Future of London and our alumni network ever since.
Altair has also been actively involved in the Emerging Talent Programme and has taken on one of the graduates, noting that career starters from diverse backgrounds benefit from a very valuable experience. The opportunity to engage with a senior network and a new cohort of professionals is a key draw for joining Future of London, he adds.
“I think we’ve got a lot that we can contribute to the Future of London network and also learn from colleagues with such different experiences,” he says. “We’re at an interesting time in terms of the government’s ambition, and that’s an opportunity.
“The challenge is to deliver whilst not necessarily having the resources to go alongside that that ambition. It’s great to go to a Future of London event and see the next generation of professionals on their journey through the sector. I think we’ve got skills in that space that we can share.”