The Regeneration Blog

A double-page spread in the Times' Bricks & Mortar section today has the screaming headline "Inner-city regeneration has 'failed to materialise'".

Another feature in the four page section asks whether the 2012 Olympic project is enough to "save Stratford", whatever that means, and there's a review of Heron's planned 36-storey tower in the City.

I will be studying this feature over the weekend and formally responding to my friends at The Times, as is right and proper, but I am afraid to say that I have been expecting this for some time.

Regular readers of this blog will know how deeply troubled I am about the waste that we've witnessed in the regeneration sector over the last ten years and our attenuated need to do something about it and fast. Sooner or later, someone was going to notice. And I'm sorry to say I predict a spate of such articles in the next few weeks. There has been waste. And people are right to be angry.

BURA chips away at our mission to share best practice and we are making some real inroads at sharing what works out there and - more importantly - what doesn't. We must step up our efforts on this front.

Our very best offer is Regeneration Masterclass 2010. Never before has it been as important to have a forum to enable senior managers from the public private and community sectors to meet, learn and share knowledge.

A lovely guy came up to me after the Sheffield gig the other day and thanked me for being kind to him a few months ago, when he had on-spec approached me after he had been made redundant by St Modwen.

Nigel Cunis - who is clearly a very talented bloke - has now found gainful employment at Sheffield City Council in their property department. So that's great for him and even greater for Sheffield.

It was a delight to meet him, and his colleague, Nalin Seneviratne, a pair of complete charmers, both ex-private sector and both great appointments for any council badly needing professionals who bring a bit of business discipline and rigour to a challenging property portfolio.

I can see the two of these as being very proactive in this market; they clearly had not missed the fact that it could be land of opportunity out there, and this is a refreshing new mindset for a local authority.

There should be more opportunities for people to cross from the private sector to the public sector, and back, for the health of regeneration. This should not be the rarity, this should be the norm. I always encourage folk I meet from the private sector (like those made redundant in recent years from real estate consultancies) to have a stint in the public sector. And vice versa.

It's done wonders for the likes of Reg, who is now a fully rounded urban regeneration professional if ever you needed an exemplar (despite his slightly irreverent remarks on this blog) and I would encourage others to follow suit. Out of your comfort zone, you learn. You develop.

I don't know why we never learn. There are a number of excellent business reasons, more than enough really, for public sector agencies, particularly those with land or other assets seeking partners for development, to be out at MIPIM.

But already this year Croydon's had a serious drubbing in the weekend papers and who knows how many red-top reporters will be sent out to stalk Boris Johnson around the duty-free shop in Nice airport as he attempts to buy some perfume for the missus whilst beating a hasty retreat having (apologetically) spent only one day at the event in order not to provoke press attention.

As with so many other things, we never seem to share best practice. We need to pool local authority experience and devise a blueprint for public sector attendees at MIPIM to get the best price for participation, and the best value for so doing.

Too frequently, elected members and officers alike are left defenceless before the onslaught of journalists on the hunt for waste-of-public-money stories. We need to track contacts made by local authorities at MIPIM over the last ten years and see what investment was leveraged as a result; the more sensationalist in the press pack may not have much of a leg to stand on then!

Smart local authorities see clearly that MIPIM is a valuable forum in which to promote regeneration projects and attract inward investment. Having said that, with a potential 25% cut in public sector budgets over next few years, we're going to have to work cuter and smarter if we are to keep local authorities - so very vital to the Cannes experience - in the MIPIM fold.

To Sheffield, for a lovely day out with my NBFs, Pro-Sheffield, stylishly hosted by Nabarro in their superb canal-side office. If you ever were looking for a living example of a regeneration strategy predicated entirely on superlative public realm delivery, Sheffield is, of course, the pre-eminent city in the UK.

Given what an exemplar it is, it is to my eternal discredit that I hadn't been there since I was a student and my old mate Mark Hatton had been President of Sheffield Poly (so about 1806, then).

Yes, I was mightily impressed by Sheffield! And also mightily impressed also by the group of concerned professionals who had come together to debate "Shaping the Agenda for Regeneration and the Built Environment". These are serious people who care passionately about what happens next.

And we had a bit of knock about fun. I was characteristically badly behaved as usual (actually, I think I'm getting worse! I just can't help myself really as I do find my default position to be incandescent-with-rage at the waste in the regeneration sector over the last ten or more years of the rising market).

And I didn't merely rehearse my usual "why oh why" shtick about TIFs (although that came out too of course) but I found myself fulminating at the tiers of intermediate structures, the top heavy apparatus of the regeneration sector. It is a sad fact that there is simply no other industry that can support the amount of overhead currently committed to regeneration structures (not actual delivery, note, but back office activity).

The kidult texted me from Exeter to say (and I quote) "Until 1948 there was a medal for town planning in the Olympic games. Love you." Can this be true?  (The medal for town planning thing, not the love bit). 

Mike Hayes? Leonora? Alex? Can you shed any light please?  

On interrogation it transpires that kidult got this from QI - that fount of all adolescent knowledge - so I guess it must be true. 

How absolutely marvellous! Let's get this medal reinstated immediately. After all, it's our show next, surely. (And you try telling that to the IOC!).

Talking of town planning, some of my correspondents have been anxious as to what transpired down in Ambridge - er, Lopen, sorry - at the planning committee the other night. I tapped up Teresa Sienkiewicz for a report on the latest in the saga. It seems that the proposal to extend the site has been withdrawn!

Please see the very nice photograph(s) of me in a digger-thing on the South Kilburn estate. I have to say, what a total thrill!

Of course, the reality is I wouldn't have any idea as to what to do with the digger-thing (other than pose for pictures in it) but it does your heart good to see the next round of demolition seriously underway at South Kilburn and four more planning permissions in the pipeline. 

Councillor Anthony Dunn, our resident and vigilant eco-warrior, is seeing us right on the greening of the estate and, given that we're necessarily doing things piecemeal, there has had to be some innovative fancy footwork from the planners on the phasing. 

There is a massive element of retro-fitting involved here, and it's complicated. Pragmatism is the watchword. This does not quite go to the heart of the affordability versus sustainability debate (more on this, this week I suspect), but it certainly makes some contribution. 

I was out plotting again with some pals the other evening, all senior regeneration practitioners (for which read: "old") of one sort or another and, admittedly, a glass or two of wine had been taken.

We got onto discussing whether "sustainability is the new regeneration" in terms of being the new emerging exciting industry to be part of, for the Noughties and the Tens, in the same way as regeneration was the party-to-be-at for the Eighties and the Nineties. And our verdict was: well, yes!

The parallels are all there. Environmental jobs are created on the fringe and (at least in the general perception) are still not mainstream. Despite a pretty coherent case, environmentalists still seem to be outsiders, banging on the door of the establishment. Those who choose the environment industry tend to be as messianic and passionate, as pointy-headed, as we were when we "invented" urban regeneration, in London Docklands (among other places) all those years ago.

Environmental projects tend to need the same skills that we deploy in urban regeneration - partnership working, building alliances and coalitions, an ability to manage cocktail funding, a forensic understanding of risk management capacity in both the public and private sectors. All this coupled with excellent technical grasp of one's subject and the patience of a saint! What's the betting that all this sounds very familiar to anyone in a so-called "green job"?

Just had to post this fantastic picture of Dan Sequerra, chair of the BURA Community Inspired Awards Panel, giving Stewart Jackson MP, the Conservative spokesperson on Regeneration, the "finger treatment" at BURA@20.

I adore Dan-Dan-the-Portuguese-Man. I love him with a fierce passion, but there is no avoiding the fact that the bloke can talk for Britain. Poor Stewart Jackson couldn't get a word in! And then you've got dear old Jim Briscoe of CB Richard Ellis looking on in exasperation, patiently waiting to have a serious conversation with Mr Jackson about the Private Rented Sector Initiative.

Ross Sturley is running a caption competition for this photograph around the BURA family as we speak. Current leader is "and you can put your localism...".

On a serious note though, it was a joy to bring something fresh and new to the table at BURA@20. Something that specifically addresses the heart of the problems that we're facing today: the need for us to have to respond to massive regeneration challenges with no money AND the need to find work for regeneration professionals who are out of work.

The admirable "Place West London" weekly e-letter carries the news this morning that Boris and Brent council have approved plans for the phased demolition and redevelopment of the Barham Park Estate. 

This is hot on the heels of the hefty approval that we got in nearby South Kilburn last week, thus neatly proving not one, but two, of my recent pet theses: first that Brent is the new Southwark and, secondly, that there is no better time than this point in the cycle for local authorities to bring their de-risked projects to market.

Get your skates on out there!

Construction at Barham will start this summer and is estimated to take five years to complete, in this case by our old friends Notting Hill Housing Association and the late Alan Cherry's Countryside Properties (btw, Richard, Guy and others, I can only apologise about not being able to attend Alan's Memorial Service in a couple of weeks. I will be strutting my stuff out at MIPIM on that day, and I have to earn my crust. I will be deeply sad not to be with you).   

If it's not one darned thing, it's another!  No sooner do I get through the BURA@20 Conference last week then we have to start working on our BURA@20 Seminar at Mipim: "More-for-Less Regeneration".

No peace for the wicked, I guess.

The BURA@20 Seminar will be the hot ticket this year, to be held in the Room Croisette, Gray D'Albion Hotel, 38 Rue des Serbes, Cannes, at midday on Wednesday 17 March. 

We are trying to achieve rather a lot at this event but it promises much, and fresh from our interesting debates of last week, we already have a great deal of interest. 

BURA always aims to combine an interesting mix of people - life's rich tapestry if you like - and we have tried to get a balance between private sector and public sector speakers (and also, from the local authority side, both a senior officer and a distinguished elected member).