Paul Silver, CEO of Dorchester Living, on coming into the housebuilding industry and what his plans are for the future.
Paul, how did you get into the housebuilding industry originally?
My career began in finance, first for a large management consultancy before moving to investment banking, where I worked in the M&A departments of Deutsche Bank and Citi Group, advising large housebuilders on major acquisitions and capital raises.
During this time, I became somewhat of a housing specialist, building many relationships at Board level with the UK’s largest housebuilders.
It was here that I first encountered changes to UK planning regulations that would subsequently have a big impact on housebuilding projects in the UK. In the late 1990s, new planning regulations were introduced which encouraged higher density development on brownfield sites. The intention was to move away from low density, greenfield development. It was a key moment for the industry as it introduced a completely different risk profile and type of customer – when you’re building 1,000 homes on a brownfield site, suddenly you have very different issues to manage.
Armed with experience, contacts and knowledge, I left investment banking to set up my own Joint Venture business, which was designed to take the risk out of large scale, urban schemes, for large scale developers.
How did you originally take ownership of Heyford Park?
The financial crisis in 2008 presented the opportunity to buy Heyford Park, a former RAF base near Bicester, from Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey.
We bought it roughly three months after Lehman Brothers had just collapsed. There had been a 12-year planning fight and I saw it as a real opportunity. You don’t often find a 1,200-acre brownfield site in Oxfordshire, and I could see the huge potential to create not just a new development, but an entire settlement.
What have you learned about large scale regeneration since taking on Heyford Park?
We’ve been able to achieve what we have at Heyford Park by learning from the expertise of others. Through my earlier career, I had good working relationships with many national housebuilders and over the years we’ve worked closely with David Bryant, Peter Andrew and Lord Matthew Taylor, amongst others. These people have more than 30 or 40 years in housebuilding; the type of experience that money can’t buy.
Having said that, whilst this type of support is invaluable, I believe you have to remain true to your own vision. The housebuilding industry is evolving very quickly, and people in every industry often rise to top by being innovative, not by doing it the same way.
Looking back at the last 12 years, what are you most proud of?
Developments like Heyford Park are long term undertakings – we know there will be housing cycles in that time, both good and bad. But if we do a good job, people will want to live here, and that’s what counts.
We’re building a lot of affordable and first-time buyer homes, which are genuinely changing lives. At the same time, we’re providing homes covering other stages of life; including large family homes and retirement-friendly bungalows. People love their houses and the well balanced community is growing, which is something I’m immensely proud of.
