So have you got what it takes to be in the top 50?

Over the past two years Regenerate has published many different answers to that question. In an attempt to come up with a definitive one, for this issue we have produced a listing of the top 50 clients in our industry.

Compiling this list has proved to be a massive undertaking. Taking as clients, the local authorities, developers, delivery agencies, housebuilders and housing associations working across the United Kingdom, we sought out those that are doing what they do well, rather than those that have the most land or the biggest development programmes. To carry out the unenviable task of whittling down our long list of candidates and ordering the top 25, we assembled a panel of expert assessors. They gathered and debated long and hard to produce the final list.

In the process of that debate, one assessor commented: “There are many that are doing truly praiseworthy work, but there is hardly any one organisation that is getting everything right, all the time.”

There’s the rub. However hard you work, however good your project team, however fantastic your designs or proactive your solutions, in regeneration you simply cannot get it all right all the time. A host of external factors have the potential to scupper the best laid regeneration plans.

But there is one quality that is common to all the clients here: perseverance. They have not lost any of their momentum when the going, as it inevitably does, gets tough. On the contrary, they have had the nerve, persistence, bloody-mindedness – call it what you will – to keep driving their project forward.

So well done to all those who feature in the first of what we hope will be an annual occurrence, and particularly to the occupant of the number one slot, Manchester City Council. Who better than Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of our top client, to provide the definitive answer to that big question: what makes a good client? On page 19 you’ll find his answer.