Sir Michael Lyons, former Birmingham council chief, to retire from regeneration fund

Sir Michael Lyons, a former chief executive of Birmingham City Council and one of the best-known figures in British regeneration, is to retire as chair of the ECF partnership at the end of January.

ECF, formerly known as the English Cities Fund, is a joint venture between Homes England's National Housing Bank, Legal and General, and the developer Muse. Sir Michael has chaired it since it was founded in 2002.

What ECF has built

• A £1 billion regeneration programme with Salford City Council, which has so far delivered 1,000 homes and 770,000 sq ft of commercial space in Salford Central.
• The £2.5 billion Crescent project in Salford, with the city council and the University of Salford, planned to create more than 3,000 homes.
• The £130 million Merchant Gate neighbourhood in Wakefield.
• Homes and workspace at St Paul's Square in Liverpool, and the transformation of Rathbone Market in London.

Current projects include a 10-year regeneration programme in Wolverhampton, the transformation of St Helens town centre, and up to 850 homes in Hull.

A public service career

Sir Michael was chief executive of Wolverhampton Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and Birmingham City Council. He led the Lyons Housing Review in 2013, which set out ways to build more homes, and more recently co-chaired the Government's New Towns Taskforce. He was also chair of the BBC Trust from 2007 to 2011. He will continue as chair of SQW Group, a research and policy consultancy.

"Patience, partnership and a willingness to invest"

Tom Roberts, head of investment and development at Legal and General, said: "Sir Michael has been the driving force behind some of the most significant regeneration projects the country has seen over the past few decades. His belief that lasting change requires patience, partnership, and a willingness to invest over the long term has shaped ECF's approach from the very beginning."

Homes England chair Pat Ritchie said his leadership had been "central to ECF's success in creating thousands of new homes and thriving places from Wakefield to Plymouth".

"An enormous privilege"

Sir Michael said: "It has been an enormous privilege to serve as chair of ECF and to have worked alongside three great partners throughout that time. We have brought together public purpose, long-term investment and delivery expertise and that approach has allowed us to take on challenges that no single organisation could have addressed alone."

"At a time when many public-private partnerships were being swept away, ECF survived because we were determined that there should be a return on the public investment," he added.

Why it matters

Long-term partnerships between councils, Government agencies and private investors have become a central model for regenerating city centres, and Birmingham's own regeneration plans rely heavily on them. The New Towns Taskforce that Sir Michael co-chaired is shaping the Government's plans for a new generation of large-scale developments across England.