Estate Matters S2 Ep2: Sir William Worsley and Avril Roberts | The need for community engagement in rural masterplanning

Good communication with neighbours and stakeholders is essential for the sound management of a rural estate, Sir William Worsley tells the latest episode of the Estate Matters podcast.

As head of the 3,000-acre Hovingham Estate in North Yorkshire, which has been in his family for more than 450 years, Sir William tells podcast host Anna Byles that it is not always easy to make people aware of all an estate does for its community, but getting the communication strategy right is vital to maintain good relations.

 “What is terribly important is not to be seen as living behind a big stone wall,” he says. “It’s about being accessible, it’s about being involved with village things that are going on.” 

He said the estate had a long-term strategy which is published on its website, and he believed drawing up a masterplan made absolute sense for any land-based business.

When it comes to major projects on estate land, Sir William stresses the importance of not shocking people and always letting them know in advance what is proposed, including engaging with the parish council.

He said Hovingham Estate is currently working on a fairly large development project.  “We’ve had a number of meetings in the village with displays, so that people can come and talk,” he said.

“I’m not keen on the sort of village meeting where everyone goes into a room and the few people that are anti hijack the meeting. I’m talking about proper consultations with people so they can come, ask the questions, talk and understand what you are trying to do.”

Joining Sir William on the podcast is Avril Roberts, Senior Property and Business Policy Advisor with the CLA. She said giving people the chance to have an input into proposals that will affect their communities is important.

“There’s been a definite challenge in the past where development has been delivered and the communication and consultation has been a placard event in the village hall where the scheme’s already been designed,” she said. “I think where schemes have been done like that in the past by whoever has done them - usually private developers who have come in – I think that has put a bad taste in the mouth.”

She said there were challenges in meeting the Government’s proposals for 1.5 million new homes over the next five years, particularly with local government re-organisation and the creation of many more unitary authorities, which can, in some cases, remove good local knowledge and mean the loss of well-informed local planners.

Both she and Sir William agreed that providing affordable homes as part of small-scale rural developments was difficult, but it was important to integrate social homes alongside larger privately owned properties to remove any stigma attached to social housing.

There are also challenges in providing homes for rent, particularly with the need to meet higher energy efficiency standards under the EPC rating system in properties that are often a more than 100 years old.

Sir William said: “We see our role as a provider of rural rental property as really important. We like to give a really good service. We like to provide good quality properties to people and almost all our residential property is in really good nick. We’ve been through most of it, refurbishing it to a high standard and I have to say the cost of doing that is very high. I reckon the return on capital of our rural property portfolio is about 0.7% which is not a great investment.”

He said as a result of the high cost of upgrading older rural homes a lot of estates are selling their residential property.  “I think that is a worry, going forwards,” he added. He said the risk was there would be a substantial reduction in rural property available, which will affect the cost of rents, through the impact of supply and demand.

Sir William has held a number of senior positions away from Hovingham Estate, including within financial institutions. He is a former president of the CLA and was the Government’s National Tree Champion from 2018 to 2020. He is the current chair of the Forestry Commission.

He took over the management of the Hovingham Estate more than 35 years ago, on the retirement of his father and became the 6th baronet on the death of his father, Sir Marcus Worsley, in 2012.

The Estate includes significant farming and forestry operations, residential and commercial property and ownership of the Hovingham village cricket pitch, which is on the front lawn of Hovingham Hall.

Avril works on policy for the CLA, liaising with Government to ensure policy works for landowners and giving advice to CLA members on property and business issues. She became interested in housing issues as a teenager when her father established a community land trust in her home village, north of Cambridge. Avril studied politics at Exeter University and worked for a West London housing association before joining the CLA.