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Would you pay some of today's highest rents in the City of London, for a balcony you could use less than one-sixth of the year?

This is it. The last speaker

**Live blogging from the NLA City of London conference, expect typos and grammatical errors**

** Live blogging from the NLA City of London conference expect typos and grammatical errors**

PUBLISHED 15 OCTOBER 2011

                                                           

Supply and Development

A look at trends in the marketplace

Mark Simmons, freelance writer, 07787 561032, msimmons@sourceform.co.uk

 

Globalisation

A look at London on the world stage

Adrian Morrison, freelance writer, 07818 013 233, adrian.morrison@addmor.com 

 

Investment

What's the outlook for the City and Dockland's investment market?

James Buckley, deputy news editor, 020 7911 1810, james.buckley@estatesgazette.com

 

Demand

Where will future demand come from?

David Thame, freelance writer 01544 262 896, dthame@clara.co.uk

 

Market health check

Covers offices in the City and Docklands. Please send up to date stats to Stacey Meadwell, regional editor stacey.meadwell@estatesgazette.com

 

Please contact writers with editorial information by Tuesday 20th September, 2011

 

 

Any of you out there got an outfit like this? Well you might need to look around for a new supplier. According to Experian the plastics and rubber industry registered the greatest percentage of business failures in July.

If you're an agent heavily into your plastics and rubber - we know there must be some of you out there - particularly those in the North East with it's heavy bent towards petrochemical occupiers it shows the worst is not over. The oil industry didn't fare that well either with 0.18% of the sector filing for insolvency in July. And, as occupier demand is thin in the region to say the least and it's difficult to see who might replace these voids.

You can see a complete table of business failures by sector and by region by clicking Experian insolvency research July 2011.xls.

Health and household topped the charts with none of its members going bust but pharmaceuticals, the bedrock of Cambridge's occupier base, also performed strongly a good sign for all those developers with cranes on the city's skyline.

Insurance followed closely behind plastics and rubber with 0.32% of its business populaton failing, a grim reminder to The City it is not out of the woods yet. So too for banking which while safely occupying the middle ground in terms of percent of business failing is still seeing a year on year increase in insolvency.By sheer numbers business services registered the highest number of insolvencies.

For the industry itself, property companies continued to fail at a greater rate than this time last year up from 0.05% in July 2010 to 0.07% in July 2011.

Geographically,  the North West performed worst with 0.14% of its firms failing - more than any other region.Scotland it seems was the best.

Picture by Fetish Art Identification Search on Flickr

Barely have we got our over-indulged bodies back behind our desks and it is time to face what the year might bring the property industry.

King Sturge, as usual, is the first to put its marker down treating its holiday-lagged clients to a breakfast presentation of its predictions yesterday.

But before we take a peak at what they reckon will happen this year, let's have a look at what they said last year and whether or not it proved true.

Well, for 2010 the Docklands was highlighted as a hotspot in the London market and, based on take up alone, that seemed to prove the case. According to BNP Paribas Real Estate's figures that we'll be publishing in this Saturday's edition of the mag, office lettings were up by an incredible 450%, albeit from a low base.

King Sturge also correctly predicted rental growth in London and a widening gap between London and the regions' office rents.

Birmingham and Leeds were top of the list of cities causing concern for the firm. Year end figures aren't available just yet but by the end of Q3, according to Drivers Jonas Deloitte, supply in Birmingham was on the increase and rents had fallen back by £1 per sq ft. Similar figures for Leeds supplied by Colliers International show supply rising, weak take up and a small drop in rents.

So what of 2011? King Sturge's head of research Angus McIntosh said the overriding feature of this year would be 'stagflation' with the market bounce-back over, albeit with some exceptions.

We are live blogging from EG's 7th annual London development summit so this post is prone to inaccuracy, omissions and typos

Peter Bishop, Group Director, Design, Development & Environment, London Development Agency

Masterplanning the Royal Docks, exploiting the opportunities for the green economy and development potential in the City East

Peter Bishop has the conference after lunch snooze shift still, he's brightening up proceedings by showing the audience the beautiful watercolour of Abercrombie London plan from the 40s - a time, he says, when architects knew how to paint.

East london has been on the cusp of being London's new development area for the last forty years and it is still on the cusp of being London's new development area. Now, its about to go over the cusp:

* London has 160 nationalities and 350 different languages
* In 1991 London started to increase in population and now we are having to accomodate 650, 000 new people
* London is beginning to move eastwards but it has been a very, very slow process
* Development here has never been an easy,smooth process. London makes elegant lurches, takes bold moves like Canary Wharf and Excel centre. Needs another bold move.

Everyone's got their own personal barometer to show whether the recession's waning.

Whether it's the growing number of suits taking wallet busting £1,000 breakfasts at Boyd's Brasserie (for the uninitiated that's the full English washed down with 3 bottles of Cristal champagne), or the queues for the new iPhone outside almost every O2 shop in London yesterday.

But I've just heard a great one being used by at least one regional property player that will answer the biggest property question of the moment: When will the banks start releasing the properties on their books?

He claims that you could tell things were much worse in the eighties because all his meeting switched almost overnight from the West End to the City. At present, he's still making the monthly pilgrimage from regions to Mayfair. If that changes to Bank, that's when he might panic.

Picture by Bixentro from Flickr, used under the Creative Commons license

England's World Cup game against Algeria wasn't the only anticipated event on the property industry's calendar on Friday. It was also the day of the 12th annual Property Chef of the Year competition organised by EG and Davis Coffer Lyons and held at new city bar and restaurant The Anthologist.

With defending champions and seasoned trophy holders CB Richard Ellis notably absent this year, there was everything for the 10 teams to play for. On the menu for the first round of cooking was linguine vongole with clams and chilli, and the competition was fierce. Salvatore Dinatale of Gilmarc and Ian Newman of IN Leisure even tagged their dishes, for our judge not to confuse their masterpieces. Sadly neither agent won.

Then it was over to the bar for a spot of cocktail making. Despite our bartender encouraging sabotage and us to throw buckets of ice at each while preparing Mango Mojitos, the atmosphere was one of concentration (although team EG managed to confuse the ingredients, substituting vodka for rum). We drank them nonetheless, and all before the clock struck 11am.

At the end of the day, Stephen Kane & Co emerged victorious, winning the coveted trophy and a bottle of champagne.

 

For more images see Estates Gazette 3rd July.