Audio recording of David Lock (b. 1948) and Jeanette Lock (b. 1948)

DL was working for Conran Roche (CR) and at the time he was coming up to his 40th birthday the firm was going through problems following the death of Fred. Unhappy with his position and encouraged by work-mates he and JL decided that he should set up as a freelance consultant. Their only guaranteed income was a small retainer in lieu of pay off for his shares in Conran Roche. DL was also offered a small retainer by Gazeley properties, one of his CR clients. They set up the business in their home at Loughton (see David Lock Associates1.1 for another telling of this story) and on the first day Olympia and York offered him a job, and when he said he was now a consultant, a piece of work in London Docklands. The practice grew with full-time appointments (Pat Willoughby was the first) and friends being brought in on freelance contracts. The office accommodation grew from a daughter’s bedroom to the kitchen, conservatory and garage before, with 15 staff, they bought the design and plot in Central Milton Keynes from an architect who couldn’t realise his plans because of the then recession.
JL realised that if she didn’t join DL in this enterprise then she’d never see him, and needed to be part of what he was doing. She took charge of finances but had no experience of accounting and tells the story of how she learnt to do double entry book-keeping and she managed time sheets etc.. They held monthly management account meetings with all senior management because they believed it important to be transparent in business. She also tells the story of going personally to collect an unpaid debt.
DL talks about how they calculated whether they could afford to take new staff on and how they paid fairly good, but not top-rate basic salaries, but these were boosted by excellent bonuses. He was planning for a staff of around 30 to 35 as he’d learnt from CR that this was big enough to do big things and yet not too big to be boring and corporate.
They formed a Ltd company in 1989 with Pat Willoughby as the first additional of what turned out to be many Directors – a policy DL explains as wanting to emphasise ‘this desire to maintain a collective sense of fellowship, of shared enterprise, so that we’re not owned by anybody else and nobody’s getting ripped off by anybody else’. He likens the practice to a Barristers’ chambers, with the proviso that unlike barristers they do work together on projects. This sharing extended to DL and JL regularly offering equity in the company for sale to Directors, but none of them own more than 10%. It also helped to incentivise staff and retain them. ‘It’s more a collegiate gathering of highly creative people who get a synergistic benefit from proximity’. DL explains this collegiate philosophy on his own gregarious personality, shaped by time in boarding school, and he is always happy with a lot of people around him, ‘like having a big family’. JL feels that people at David Lock Associates are working with the company not for it. They want this family feel to extend to extra-curricular involvement in leisure activities because so much of one’s life is spent at work and their hope that long after they have retired that ‘there will still be a group of people that liked working together and worked well together.’
As David Lock Associates (and the Directors) grew the structure became unwieldy and the burden is now shared by a small operations group, led by Lawrence Revill who took over from DL as MD in 2007. DL handed over partly because he wanted to make the point about succession but also because the size (70 then) was too big for him.
DL talks about the recession and making people redundant and how this differs from previous recessions when they flourished, but now government tendering favours ‘the big boys’. He also talks about naming the firm and thoughts about its future name. Mention is made of associated firms – David Lock Associates in Australia, David Lock Associates Architects and Integrated Planning and the cross trading and cross ownership arrangements.
DL talks about his dream of a quarter in urban design in MK that would contain complementary businesses, and a learning centre and use MK as a living laboratory. He also talks about his commitment to going into Planning Schools to share his experience and being a visiting Professor. Asked about the USP of David Lock Associates he believes it’s about thinking sideways and thinking fresh, the bigger picture and the longer view as the background to detailed planning – an holistic approach learned at MK Development Corporation. He describes what is meant by ‘creating a narrative’ for a development and uses the example of Ebbsfleet and the Channel Tunnel and how his and Will Cousins narrative influenced the final route of the rail link. DL talks passionately about the philosophy behind their work. ‘We are on the side of the angels, trying to get people houses in good places, OK? And that’s a good thing to be doing, to be getting up for every morning. It is not a worthless or negotiable activity. This is the staff of life, and it’s fine thing to be dealing with. To be paid to do it is a great privilege.’ They both talk about what work they would or would not consider taking on for moral reasons and finally DL mentions being commissioned to produce a plan for Greater Bristol for 2050.