Estate Matters Episode 16: Ben Murphy | The Duchy of Cornwall Estates Director on the vital role of legacy developments.

Hugh Hastings Photography

Creating affordable housing that is no different in quality to homes built for open market sale is a matter of huge pride for the Duchy of Cornwall at its two high-profile developments, Poundbury in Dorset and Nansledan in Cornwall.

Duchy Estates Director Ben Murphy tells the latest episode of KOR Communications’ Estate Matters podcast that more than a third of the homes built at Poundbury, the Duchy’s community on the edge of Dorchester where work began more than 30 years ago, are affordable.

“It’s something we are incredibly proud of,” he says. “Thirty five percent of Poundbury being delivered is affordable - it was 20% initially because that was the policy on phase one, since then 35% of housing is affordable and it’s tenure blind, which just means it is indistinguishable from private – it’s built to the same quality – and do not underestimate what that can mean to the social cohesion of a place.”

Ben trained as a lawyer and then as a surveyor. He worked for the Homes and Communities Agency and as development manager on the Olympic Park in the run-up to London 2012. He joined the Duchy of Cornwall, initially as Deputy Director of Estates, in 2014 and became Director in 2017.

He tells Estate Matters podcast host Anna Byles that one of the biggest challenges of running the Duchy is its sheer size – 130,000 acres across 23 counties – along with the diversity of its holdings and the distances between them.

Around half of Duchy land is rural, with a quarter commercial and 22% residential. It includes sites across the South West of England and the Isles of Scilly as well as parts of London and the South East.

The current focus is on residential development at Nansledan in Cornwall, where the Duchy is nine years into a 30-year development project that will eventually become a 4,000-home extension to the seaside town of Newquay, potentially creating 4,000 jobs.

The Duchy also has a planning application under consideration for an extension to Faversham in Kent where 2,500 homes, commercial premises and infrastructure is proposed to meet local needs.

The Duchy earned a reputation for building beautiful places that meet local needs with Poundbury, now seen as a blueprint for placemaking by designers, architects and planners all over the world.

Ben reveals that the key to the success of Poundbury, and the principles that guide the development at Nansledan and the proposal for Faversham, is engagement with communities, local planning authorities and other stakeholders.

In the case of Nansledan, he says: “The engagement with local people from the outset that has led to that strong Cornish character and identity has meant that it’s been wholly embraced from the outset. I touch wood when I say this, but it’s the largest development project in Cornwall and so far, it’s been non-controversial. I think people can see from the outset that we’ve been focused on delivering local needs both for homes and jobs.”

The Duchy adheres to very specific principles when starting out with a development proposal and is careful never to turn up in a community with plans already drawn up. It holds a design charette, usually over a weekend, within the community, and appeals to as many local people as possible to engage.

“You need very much to prepare,” Ben says. “You have to have an understanding of the site and the policy and the needs of the local area. In all cases you end up with a better masterplan by fully engaging with local people, allowing them to guide and influence the process.”

The Duchy’s insistence, through the very strong influence of the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, on adhering to strong design principles, is being carried through by his son, Prince William, who is now in charge of the Duchy.

Ben says those principles are key to the success of Duchy developments. “Your credibility is everything. With a landed estate…I think we’re held to a higher bar, and rightly so,” Ben says. “It’s not just a commercial play for us, not at all – we have our values and our vision to uphold and yes, it’s reputation as well for our boss, now Prince William, the Prince of Wales. He set the bar high, like his father did.”

Those principles of design and build draw heavily on lessons from the past, Ben says, but the development at Poundbury and those that have followed have pioneered an approach to place-making that delivers for people, with high levels of satisfaction and some of the lowest levels of rent arrears of any housing developments in the country.

In reflecting on the Duchy’s greatest achievements in building new communities, Ben goes back to the point about refusing to differentiate between the most expensive homes built for private sale and those constructed for tenants to rent at affordable rates.

“I think the Duchy can be most proud of the integration of affordable housing,” he says.

And his advice to other landed estates setting out on their own development pathway is to always keep hold of the initiative. 

“Reputations are easily lost and incredibly hard earned,” he says. “I speak sometimes to other landed estates who perhaps haven’t retained control of the situation, and they’ve regretted it for that reason. 

“Our approach in a land stewardship sense for development is to make sure absolutely that we have a vested interest, and we retain our long-term interest to make sure that the vision we’ve created with the community is delivered.”