David Taylor

Disambiguation: Not to be confused with the MP David Taylor, now deceased Labour MP for North West Leicestershire.

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This article is part of the Lobbying Portal, a sunlight project from Spinwatch.

This article is part of the Revolving Door project of Spinwatch.

David Taylor is a former unpaid special adviser to the Labour Party who worked in the housing and regeneration sector.

Background

Taylor was educated at Galashiel Academy and the school of architecture at Dundee University; and later the Architectural Association in London. For fifteen years, Taylor co-presented a Granada TV programme, Flying Start, with the now deceased music guru Tony Wilson. From 1981 to 1993, Taylor was a research assistant to John Prescott MP, advising on regional policy issues. In 1983, he became deputy then managing director of Lancashire Enterprises; where he worked until becoming managing director of Amec Developments and Amec Regeneration in 1989. He left in 1993 and from then until 1996 was founding chief executive of English Partnerships. From 1996 to 2000, Taylor was group chief executive of Enterprise plc.

Taylor was a special adviser to the deputy prime minister John Prescott from 1997 to 1998.

In 2000, Taylor established David Taylor Partnerships Ltd (DTP), "a leading development management company engaged in regeneration projects throughout the UK". Taylor is executive chairman. The firm was recently involved in the structuring of two major London-based projects: the £1.5bn residential and leisure development at Silvertown Quays in the Thames Gateway, and the regeneration of Rotherhithe at Southwark's Canada Quays.

Between 2002 and 2008, Taylor was chairman of Hull Citybuild, a Government urban regeneration company (URC). Since 2003, he has been chairman of the East Lancashire Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder, Elevate East Lancashire. Since 2006, he has been a board member of Olympic Delivery Authority. He is also Chairman of Silvertown Quays and Canada Quays Ltd (joint ventures with the Kajima Corporation and British Land plc).

Lobbying activities

According to David Conn of The Guardian, the geographical divide and "public-private sector combinations" shape Taylor's working life. Conn writes:

Along with the clout, excellent political contacts, and expertise in combining public and private sector investment garnered over 25 years, Taylor has cut an attractive figure to successive governments because his approach is to use public money to stimulate entrepreneurship. He is uncompromisingly hostile to grant handouts, which he says are stifling and encourage "dependency culture". Government money, he argues, should be invested in "public infrastructure" - transport, education, health, housing - to restore confidence, and his formula also includes rebranding depressed areas, to accentuate their positives. "That is very important," he says. "In some ways, it needs fresh eyes, because the people who live there can no longer see it. Decades of decline bring what I call low civic self-esteem."

Taylor has worked as a lobbyist for Crossrail, the £16 billion link that would enable rapid transit between Heathrow and the City. Taylor, who says "The north-south divide - or, more accurately, the divide between north and south-east - still exists and is pretty fundamental" also notes that "with that money, you could make a massive impact in the north." As Chairman of Elevate East Lancashire, he also secured £150m of Government funding for housing renewal in East Lancashire. He said:

We got the money in the end. It is the second biggest pathfinder settlement, so the government is backing what we are doing. But it gets tougher, and every year we have to fight harder for our money. I don't mind fighting my corner, justifying the case here and in Hull for investment, but my whole life experience tells me it takes a minimum of 10 years, probably 15 to 20, to address major problems of decline. We need long-term consistency.