We define Commercialism as compliance with the best modern working practices, continually striving for efficiency, demonstrating value for money, and working to better understand our customers and their business.

Examples of The Crown Estate and Commercialism include:

Regent Street

The redevelopment programme on Regent Street remains core to our long term investment strategy. The pattern of lease expiries that is taking place in Regent Street has provided us with the first opportunity in 80 years to shape the street as a prime retail and business location and an outstanding environment for decades to come.

We are part-way through a programme of major schemes on the street, involving an investment of over £500 million in re-development for the area. This included the relocation of our London headquarters to Regent Street.

Marine estate

As part of our long term strategy to realise the opportunities of offshore renewable energy we have, working in co-operation with the windfarm industry and BERR, successfully completed three rounds of site licensing.

MaRS (Marine Resource System)

Across our marine estate the interactions between competing development activities, environmental considerations, legislative compliance and stakeholder demands are becoming increasingly complex. To help facilitate marine management and development, in particular the offshore wind farm industry, our marine estate developed an information resource called MaRS (Marine Resource System).

MaRS is a decision-support tool which interrogates third party data sets using GIS technology to identify potential areas for sectoral development. The tool produces three key outputs: site suitability for potential business activity, the sustainability value of that activity and financial analysis of the potential revenue to the business which will enable long-term informed decision making.

With MaRS we aim to maximise the value and sustainable benefit of our marine asset for the benefit of the UK taxpayer.

As a recognition of its success, MaRS won the 2010 ESRI Award for Return on Investment.

Rural estate – strategic review

We recognise that with more pressure on rural incomes and the prospect of changes in farming support mechanisms, there is a need to review our rural estate strategy. As viable businesses, holdings must have as secure a future as possible, and the diversification to less traditional forms of farming must be encouraged where the challenge is taken up. Our commitment to long term investment in agricultural land underwrites our rural policy.

Managing agents

Urban, rural and marine estates hold conferences with their managing agents on a regular basis. These provide an excellent opportunity to discuss strategic business issues and share experiences from around the country, is an opportunity to reinforce our corporate values to our agents and explain how they will complement and enhance the way they already work with The Crown Estate and our customers.