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 two rounds of site licensing.

WindBase

To help facilitate the development of the offshore windfarm industry, our marine estate developed an information resource called WindBase, a Geographical Information System (GIS) that brought together a wide variety of data. This enabled the industry to identify opportunities and constraints that exist around the UK coastline and determine potential sites for these windfarm developments.

Being a demonstration tool Windbase is no longer available through the website, but is often cited as a useful contribution to the debate about the accessibility of marine information and data sets for improved decision making.

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.