Considering how difficult it was to get take up stats from Manchester's office agents at the end of last year, I thought its all new singing and dancing office agents forum would release them to a fanfare.
The idea, floated this time last year, was Manchester would follow in the footsteps of their regional cousins and present a collective view of office take up from this January onwards.
But three months into the year and the fanfare has yet to sound as agents couldn't agree on a date in Q4 last year to gather and agree on the figures.
Needless to say, in that time, agents released their own figures, and CB Richard Ellis grabbed the headlines in February, reporting that take up in the city centre reached 830,000 sq ft. (EGi subscribers can read the story here). Other agents also released reports, all telling a different story.
I was given a sneak peak of the Forum's data and it reports that take up in the city centre reached 809,999 sq ft. The discrepancies aren't huge, but they do scupper the Forum's dreams of uniformity and consistency - in its first year at least.
Other Forums around the country have had fewer problems. Martin Guest of CB Richard Ellis and outgoing chief executive of the Birmingham Office Market Forum, says theirs works because agents meet regularly, work together, trust each other and follow the ground rules. "And the proof is in the pudding" he says.
No doubt the the MOAF will be hoping its pudding bakes better later this year.
Picture of Spinningfields by And-Raw89 http://www.flickr.com/photos/and-rew/ / CC BY 2.0
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