Recently in North West Category

The North West is "leading the UK out of recession," and "intervention at a regional level has protected the region from the ravages of recession." That was the bullish claim of one speaker at this morning's Smith Institute seminar at the House of Lords this morning I went to this morning.

The institute used the seminar, which featured among others North West minister Phil Woolas, to unveil its latest publication,The Future of the North West.pdf

The report states that the North WEst now has a £120bn economy and urges that the region be granted greater economic powers in order that its economic priorities be met.

The Chatham House rule prevents me from dishing the dirt on who exactly said what, but the flavour was a generally positive - vehemently at times - overview of how the North West is faring this downturn.

View Experian business failures by region Jan 2010 in a larger map

Business insolvencies across the UK are falling, in fact they are at the lowest rate since June 2007. That's the good news from Experian today.

Unfortunately for Yorkshire, it is top of the list of failures with nearly double the amount of businesses going under last month compared to virtually every other part of the country. It's closely followed by the North East.


LOSERS
Yorkshire had the highest rate of failures in January
Scotland was the only region to see a year on year increase in insolvency

WINNERS
Wales had the lowest rate of business failures in January
The South West was the most robust, with the best financial strength score in January
The North East lost the ignoble top spot as the region with the highest insolvency rate decreasing 30%

Greater London saw the highest year-on-year improvement in financial health yet had the lowest overall financial strength score of any region.

There's plenty of talk about Peel's MediaCityUK at the moment, especially surrounding ITV, which is currently based in central Manchester but is talking to Peel about a potential move (EGi subscribers can read about the talks here).

In the wake of EG's Manchester Focus reception on Wednesday evening, I made the trip to Salford Quays yesterday to see for myself how the scheme is coming along.

The view from many in Manchester is that Peel needs to bag ITV in order to bring a second major media anchor to the scheme, and prevent it from simply becoming known as the BBC's home in The North.

With ITV recently appointing former FA and Royal Mail man Adam Crozier as chief executive and Archie Norman as chairman, most are hopeful that the broadcaster's long-mooted move to Salford Quays, taking with it the famed cobbles of Coronation Street, will happen.

That said, the view of Media City from across the Manchester Ship Canal is already pretty impressive. Click on the slide-show below to see the photographic evidence.

 

After inflicting sticky floors and less than glamourous surroundings on our guests last year (the person who recommended the venue confessed to having been a little bit tipsy when they'd visited) it was time for something a bit, well, nicer for this year's annual Manchester reception.
 
And our choice of The Modern at Urbis, with it's panoramic views of the city, seemed to go down well with the city's property industry who turned out in force, despite the snow.

There was plenty to talk about, some of which may even make it into the Manchester features. The rest? Well I couldn't possibly say except that it involved a life guard and a moustache.

Here are a few pictures, we'll add the rest as they become available. You can also click here for the Manchester and North West industrial synopses.

Overview
An examination of the region's market
Melanie Smith, editorial assistant, 020 7911 1916, melanie.smith@estatesgazette.com

Both Deloitte and Drivers Jonas have offices in Manchester, on Hardman Street and New York Street respectively, but how the two companies handle their space requirements after the conclusion of the merger, which was announced on Friday, is unclear.

The news of the merger sent shockwaves through the market as it potentially gives Drivers Jonas, with it's 650 staff, access to Deloitte's impressive list of FTSE 100 clients and wider network of UK offices.  It gives accountancy firm Deloitte's 40-strong property team a chance to grow (see our earlier post for details and interactive map of two firms UK offices).

Deloitte also has an office in Liverpool and Dan Cunningham our North West reporter asked head of Drivers Jonas' Manchester office, John Adams, about the plans for the merged companies North West presence. He said: "Our partnership with Deloitte will afford us an exciting opportunity to extend the range of high quality services and advice that we provide to clients across the North West.

"We see huge opportunity in combining Deloitte's real estate skills and wider business expertise with our full range of property and construction services. North West investors and occupiers will benefit from a fully integrated, market-leading offer combining real estate knowledge, tax, finance and structuring advice.

"We have continued to grow our North West business throughout the recession and, as Drivers Jonas Deloitte, can now look forward to exponential growth, increasing the scale of our real estate service offering and overall traction within the North West property market. For now, though, it is business as usual for our clients, and that remains our top priority."

For comment from Drivers Jonas and the market reaction in Leeds click here.
For reaction from East of England agents at our Cambridge reception on Friday click here.
For market reaction in Birmingham click here.

Barely 24 hours since Jim Gill announced he was to hang up his gloves as chief executive of Liverpool Vision (EGi subscribers can read more here) and already there's plenty of market chatter about who is likely to be in the frame, or at least, who should be in the frame.

Vision's chairman, Mike Parker, is already on the hunt for Gill's replacement, but one unofficial name to crop up at this early stage is Vision's investment director, Mike Taylor, who used to head up Business Liverpool before it was incorporated into Vision in 2008. 

In general, Liverpool agents are full of praise for Gill, the man who oversaw Vision during a period of significant growth for Liverpool as a city and a property market.

Another day, and there's another end of year ranking. This times it's Experian's Insolvency Index. And the North East wins the ignoble top spot registering the highest level of insolvencies last year.

It's bad news for Newcastle landlords who've already had to entice occupiers in with ultra competitive deals, including whispers of a rent free of eight years for Tescos at Grantside's Quorum (EGi subscribers can read the full story here).

Nip across the border and Scotland saw the lowest level of insolvencies this year, although that figure seemed to accelerate in December.

Generally, Experian says the average finanical strengh for business in Great Britain improved steadily this year, after insolvencies peaked in the first half of 2009. Mid-sized businesses bore the brunt of the pain with the very large, and the very small avoid calamity more easily.

In London businesses struggled most financially  but, throughout the year the Greater London region showed the biggest improvement.

An easing of conditions for occupiers has fed through to the property industry. There were 144 property insolvencies in December 2009, down 18.6% on December 2008, but, unlike the all industry average the financial strength of the property sector actually dropped (albeit a fairly small amount) - from 84.79 to 83.63. The all industry strength was 81.37.

Click through on the continue reading link below to see the figures for financial strength by industry and insolvency figures by sector.

I'm currently up in a very rainy Manchester, catching up on all the news and gossip and gathering ideas for our upcoming Manchester Focus ahead of the release of the synopsis at our reception on the 3rd Feb (you can get more details by clicking here).

A recurring theme is the lack of office stock in the pipeline. Indeed, walking around Manchester, cranes on the skyline are notable by their absence.

Final year-end figures for 2009 are soon to be finalised, but Lambert Smith Hampton reckons there is around 900,000 sq ft of prime availability in the centre. Total take-up for 2009 is expected to have reached the 700,000-800,000 sq ft mark, meaning that there's little more than a year's worth of stock out there.

 Picture by Frankie Roberto used under the Creative Commons license on Flickr.

Click on View image to see larger maps.

So Britain's biggest retailer Tesco, announced its strongest sales for three years today. For it, the big freeze and ensuing panic buying to stock up on storecupboard items can't have hurt. Nor can reports on the BBC's Today programme  that because of the freezing conditions we can't get to the high street sales and, faced with being forced to stay indoors, we're splurging on contraception instead.

But for the rest of the high street it's been less cheery (think of Debenhams warning today and Marks and Spencer's performance last week).

Synovate's retail traffic weathermap (see above) shows there's been lower footfall than forecast for December as wintry weather made shopping trips more difficult meaning there were fewer early bargain hunters.

There's a definite north/south divide with footfall dropping 3% in the midlands and northern england (which covers, the north east, north west Yorkshire and the Humber). In contrast  it rose in London and the south east (4%) and Wales and the south west(nearly 3%).