August 2009 Archives

We got the Loud Lanky Lad's GCSE results today and, as expected, we had hoped for a little more! Poor lad isn't best served, of course by being book-ended by two high-achieving feisty girls (I didn't do this on purpose, honest) but he does suffer from that uniquely exasperating combination: huge ability coupled with pathological laziness.

He may be beautiful and personable (and tall, of course) but as I keep saying to him "Bruno, it isn't enough to be pretty and charming". He looks at me blankly and I guess all the messages he gets are that, actually, his mother is out of touch, and it might just be enough after all.

                Reinventing Coronation Street: Urban Splash's Chimney Pot Park           

On this very theme, they've already accepted him into the sixth form, even though he didn't get the number of A-grades they say they require. So I guess it could have been worse...and all my friends who have lads the same age say this is completely normal as "he's a boy, what do you expect?" (I'm not sure how much comfort this imparts, actually, I think this apartheid between girls and boys is a symptom of a serious societal malaise). Of course I can't help but want to give him a bit of a shake.

Hey..... what's the betting that it's him - of my three - who becomes rich and famous? Life is indeed very strange.

Wonderful to hear from my old friend, Guy Lambert, at Countryside Properties on the blog and great to discover that that truly great man, Alan Cherry, is also a blogger. He was always game, Alan (bet he got his A grades in his exams).

Me and 'im indoors have taken to going on long (for us, anyway) walks. We did a few walks in Budleigh Salterton along the coastal paths (on the rare occasions when it wasn't bucketing with rain!) and, at my instigation, we made a pact then to do a gentle five miles each weekend, on the basis that life is passing me by.

(I seem to have spent all my weekends for the last two decades doing the washing. Socks are the bane of my life, just so's you know - probably in common with every other working mother in the world - I have more unpaired socks in my house than you could shake a box of Persil at!)

The weekend before last we took the car in a westerly direction and did the Maidenhead walk from Boulters Lock. And last weekend, due to 'im indoors whinging on about our carbon footprint (would be quite laudable this, were he not so wretchedly inconsistent about it all), we set off from our front door and headed south, across the river into Barnes, past the Loud Lanky Lad's school and Julian Barwick's house (doffing caps respectfully at both) and then back over Hammersmith Bridge (needs a lick of paint again, guys) before dropping into the Dove for the obligatory pint of London Pride.

Was out for a lovely bit of supper with a good friend of mine last night, who happens to be a very famous and highly regarded head-hunter in the construction and development industry (no, I'm not going to tell you her name, nosey! But if I went on to say that she is possibly the most glamorous woman I have ever met, you will immediately fall in).

My mate was lamenting the August lag, and that there isn't enough to do at the moment (poor woman has been reduced to reading my blog - quelle embarrassant!) and, as with almost everyone I know, we were pondering what is going to happen next. Without generating a vast number of conclusions, I am sorry to report.

My friend is a real futurologist (I guess you have to be in her business) and if she is at a loss to make predications, then I do - genuinely - worry about where the industry is going.

I will say this though: there are some very impressive people in the upper echelons of the job-placing industry right now (my friend included of course).

My newest hero in all of this is John Philpott, Chief Economist of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)) who recently said (apropos of the outlook for jobs) that "the best that can be said is that things are getting worse more slowly", which is one of those totally brilliant lines that you just wish you'd thought of first! That bloke is a real class act and should be listened to with care.

I am in spear-carrying mode again (dear old Jim Barham at Rialto Homes used to refer to me as "Boadicea" in Paddington days; I do not think he intended this as a compliment).

In my role as chair at the South Kilburn Partnership (SKP), it was my pleasant duty to draft my introduction to the 2009/10 Business Plan today. Regular readers of this blog will know there has been considerable pain in South Kilburn and, from what I understand, we were not alone among the 39 New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes (set up by the forebears of Communities and Local Government in 2000) many of whom have suffered similar dissonance.

But - as South Kilburn residents will loudly affirm - the past is another country and we must move onwards and upwards. So I am proud to be able to say that we have been one step ahead of the other NDC programmes in South Kilburn in setting up our legacy vehicles with the establishment of the over-arching South Kilburn Partnership (SKP) and its delivery arm, the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust (SKNT) - and I chair both bodies (there is just no limit to how many hats can I wear at once!).

Sunday morning. The kidult has skipped off to the "V Festival", somewhere in Essex, which I understand is a sort of Glastonbury-for-lightweights, along with some other Princesses (one of their fathers is an organiser of the festival, natch! Oh to be born with a silver spoon....) and the other pair of adolescents are still in their pits. Leaving me to catch up with my reading, whilst 'im indoors curses at the lawnmower.

Do we hold out any hopes for the old Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) then?

We seem to have been talking about it for a long time so I find it quite hard to believe that it was only as recently as 30th July that the Government published further details on the implementation of the CIL. I have been trying anew to get my head around the (161 pages!!!! Put a bit of a strain on my toner cartridge I can tell you!) consultation document today.

The idea is to give local authorities the power to introduce a new discretionary development charge. The levy would partially fund local and sub-regional infrastructure related to development that may cross local authority boundaries and is set to be introduced in April 2010, just weeks before the General Election.

Bob Neill MP, Conservative Shadow Minister for Planning, seems up for a conversation or two. He has been widely encouraging the property industry to contribute to the development of the Conservative Party's planning policy.

Apparently the Tories will be publishing detailed plans of their localism proposals in the Autumn (this will be something of a relief to us all) and Mr. Neill is consistently indicating that he wants the industry to feed in ideas on how it (localism) could work in practice.

I think we will all need to be mobilized on this, so I will be keeping more than one eye out and will be issuing a strong call to arms when the time comes.

We cannot let this opportunity pass us by. Remember, this is the same Bob Neill that wrote to Mike Pitt at the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) to urge him to go easy on staff recruitment for the new body on the basis that they (the IPC) are likely to be disbanded in the first months of the new administration.

Hurrah! The kidult got her grades and is off to university at the end of September. And what a blessed relief, since there was no "plan B" and I would have despaired of ever getting her back into full-time education, if she'd been allowed to have a gap year.

The level of hysteria in the Elworthy household as we approached the Big Day was truly something else, I can tell you. Well I'm certainly looking forward to her moving into her hall of residence (Exeter, since you ask; it would seem that a number of West London princesses and princes are to flock there) - not that I don't love her and will miss her dreadfully but it will mean I can get Kim 'n' Aggie around to purge her room (which I am fearful that the local council may condemn otherwise).

Love her. She's pleased. And she was genuinely anxious.

Gave her a big hug up (it will not, of course stop there: there will be numerous lunches, glasses of champagne, frocks, handbags and other "little rewards" extracted over the next three or four weeks) then out for a superb lunch (I certainly do aspire to be the lady wot lunches) with the ever rock-solid Colin Smith, who heads up the CBRE CPO team and dear old Niall Lindsay of Thurrock UDC.

I had a rather bizarre day at the end of last week. Wonderful BURA staffer (Jessica Courtney Bennett - how could you leave us, JCB?) asked me if I would be prepared to talk to BBC South East about Ramsgate (pictured below). 

Lovely place, quoth I (my old mum used to have a house in Deal) but why's it topical right now? Well, nobody seemed to know.

But I'm nothing if not a team player, and I dutifully rocked up to the Millbank studio to report at the allotted time. Was ushered into studio "MB2" (blimey what a dump!) and (sort of) greeted by a very friendly and chatty technician.

Asked him what it was all about, "Oh they never tell me anything" he cheerfully replied and then went on to explain that the BBC, despite being in the business of communications are indeed the most non-communicative bunch you could care to meet. You have to smile.

Eventually did the piece "down the line" to Tunbridge Wells and found myself being asked questions about a film made by a residents' group which - as I had to patiently explain on several occasions - I had not seen!

My mates over at Place West London publish a very good weekly e-newsletter called LookWest and it is always worth a quick look if you wish to keep up with comings-and-goings in the West London sub region.

I am loyal to West London, not just because I live there, or because I used to run the Park Royal Partnership, or because I chair the South Kilburn Partnership - although these are all very good reasons - but mostly because my very good mate, the wonderful John Izett of Jones Lang LaSalle, chairs West London Business and I love him (as well as the boys over at Place West London) and I do what I can to support. We are family.

I have to say that many regions and sub-regions would benefit from this accessible type of weekly round-up. LookWest is in-yer-face and pioneering, with a serious sense of community, pumped straight into subscribers' PCs on a Tuesday morning (Ross, I think you should seriously think of franchising this methodology - chimes absolutely with the old localism, after all - could BURA help in any way? Let's have lunch!).

Among many other interesting stories this week I learn that - of all commentators -Hammersmith & Fulham council says that the Westfield London (pictured above) is not succeeding in creating a night-time economy (oh why am I not surprised?).

In a fairly full-on attack (and not, please note, by died-in-the-wool-planners muttering to each other in pubs, or me being irreverent in a blog), the council's official newspaper, H&F News, claims that parts of Westfield, including the Southern Terrace nearest to Shepherds Bush station, could be described as a "ghost town".

I struck a nerve with my last (somewhat sarky) posting on John Denham's High Street funding initiative. If even Mary Portas is getting involved, it seems it may be timely to have a radical new look at the issue of British high streets.

Indeed, it is fair to say there is a huge amount of sepia-tinged nostalgia which drives this debate and this may take some considerable unpicking.

One of my trusted advisers sent me an informative e-mail: "The expression 'High Street' itself is a major source of confusion in this respect" he says "only about half the shop stock in the UK is located in defined town centre shopping areas (what everybody euphemistically describes as 'High Street') despite single street shopping in town centres nowadays being a rarity".

The "High Street" was a term coined by the Victorians to describe shopping when single thoroughfare strip shopping was common (the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker).

The rest of our shops - including a big slug of the current retail vacancies - is scattered throughout conurbations, urban areas and in small towns and villages all over the country.

Were any of you as bemused as me about the government announcing a "£3m funding package to help rejuvenate high streets scarred by empty shops"?

A senior retail analyst of my acquaintance said "I thought it was a misprint originally as I figured they meant £30bn. £3m is just about enough to pay for the coffee and biscuits at the local authority meetings as they chat about 'saving the High Street' ".

Does John Denham seriously think that this will help ensure town centres "remain vibrant places for people to meet and shop"?

Was out for a drink last night with the lovely John Holmes of Hull Forward who is to receive £90k from the pot for his delightful Whitefriargate project. He smiled ruefully as well but he's a seasoned old roué, too battle-worn to be cynical anymore. He takes the pragmatic view that beggars can't be choosers. And as he is a brilliant and creative practitioner, he will leverage this cash up as best he can. All power to his elbow.

The Denham plan is to "transform empty shops into something useful such as a meeting place, a learning centre or a even a showroom for local artists". But it is very well understood that 'creative uses' in this context do not often have the word viable attached to them.

As a rough guide, £50,000 per High Street would get you:

• 10 mature trees
• Repointing of one, maybe one and a half façades
  
• Painting of three or four shop fronts
• Repaving 50-60 sq m with high quality stone

Better yet, each local authority could commission a well-intentioned consultant for £45,000, get some great ideas on 'creative uses' that they can implement with the remaining £5K (minus the coffee and biscuits of course).

Great idea guys.

I know I've been banging on about unemployment ad nauseam recently, but it really is the key issue of the day.

Today's Audit Commission report (When it comes to the crunch - How councils are responding to the recession) makes grim reading.

It reports that the UK is still in the first phase of the downturn, which is characterised by  business failures, bankruptcies and unemployment.

But it also says the country will soon be facing a "second wave of consequences triggered by long-term unemployment".

It finds that local and national government have made a positive initial response to the recession, but it warns that councils should prepare for worsening social impact as unemployment rises and the figures released today reinforce that continual upward trend.

Demand for benefits, welfare and help with debt are growing, and social problems such as domestic violence and mental ill-health are expected to follow as the recession deepens.

HCA watchers are beginning to digest the fallout from Kickstart and, of course, we are all tracking the much vaunted Single Conversation, currently underway with local authorities.

Those local authorities who are or have been in receipt of good news are now finding that the timetable for the pilots is rather onerous.

As a result they are necessarily getting very busy indeed.

But sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.....As one wag put it, "some may fall over from the shock!"

And - whoopee - there is also new vocabulary to learn as well as new TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).

Well, they are a government agency, after all. Bless.

Hands up who know what LIPs and LIAs are then? Or as The Jane Doe's sang: "Who's kidding who, spouting truth through lips of liars?" (Who says I don't do popular culture, then?)

Well, LIPs are Local Investment Plans and LIAs are Local Investment Agreements. These are both "non-legally binding" Single Conversation output documents. Now I know I'm a bit dense but I do struggle a bit to understand what the practical difference is between the documents.

I like London in August. You tend to get space to think. And with the parliamentary recess well underway and most of our elected representatives away, we have a welcome opportunity to reflect on what has been a truly turbulent year.

In the last few months it has sometimes been very hard to truly make sense of what is happening. Failed financial services sector, collapse in the property market, Allowance-Gate, soaring unemployment, nationalised banks, an election on the horizon, the London Olympics around the corner......we certainly live in a funny old world.

Sometimes you need some distance and perspective. Recharging the batteries is essential - we're only human after all - harnessing every ounce of energy and focus to address these challenges is vital.

Returning to London, I was really disappointed to catch up on the ongoing dispute between National Express and the RMT causing so much disruption to the lives of poor commuters travelling to London from East Anglia.

Catching up on e-mails and goss after my hols, and I have been hearing - and from more than one source I might say - that the girls and boys in the London Thames Gateway are none too pleased with our new Minister for Housing, Mr John Healey (pictured left).

In fact some of m'learned friends in East London think that the London Thames Gateway has been "well and truly shafted" by his latest announcements.

I understand that the row concerns the £1.5bn HCA Kickstart settlement for the East London sub-region. So far so good, you might think.

But apparently, whilst some of this money is to be found from anticipated underspends in other departmental budgets, over a third is to be found from "reprioritization" (dread word) of existing HCA programmes.

In English, this means money already pledged to East London for such crucially needed measures as the Decent Homes programme.

There is a legitimate row here on the need for genuine new money for new housing, not just that old shtick of robbing Peter to pay Paul by reallocating money that has already been pledged for other housing programmes. As rehearsed elsewhere (throughout the blog archive in fact!) a plague on every government department that attempts this sleight of hand - we weren't all born yesterday!

One thing about being rained out on holiday, is that you do catch up on your reading. I was tickled pink to discover that the local authority anecdote about a "whistle blower", trailed in this blog, had been picked up in the Estates Gazette Diary column shortly after. Always nice to be recognized in the magazine, thanking you Julia.

When I alerted my original source of the story to this newfound fame, he gleefully informed me that the same guy who was the butt of that tale has just spent the last two weeks attending the Examination in Public (EiP) at the local authority concerned, and complained about absolutely everything.

Apparently he was invoking his European human rights and all sorts. My informant, who is a rather well-educated type, was extremely disappointed that he didn't cite the Magna Carta and was waiting with bated breath, "but alas no".

At one point the Inspector stopped this geezer in his tracks and told him that he had completely misunderstood the whole principle of town planning in the UK. This provided a very amusing moment for all concerned. But, as my informant points out, since when has that stopped anyone?

Every local authority needs its own resident Chief Nutter. So very very British!

What a washout !!!!

Anyone who had spent any part of the last fortnight in Devon would be hard pressed to believe the stories of impending doom through global water shortages.

I have seriously never seen rain like it.

Admittedly, we did have a very nice cottage backing onto the beautiful beach in Budleigh Salterton. 

But you try spending any stretch of time with three adolescents in a confined space in the pouring rain with no internet connection.

At one point - yes this did actually happen - the Elworthy family were compelled to do jigsaws!

I don't know which wag from the EG (actually I have a pretty good idea) posted the image of a thunderstorm to explain my absence from the blog, but, sadly, it was pretty much on the money.

We had one gloriously sun-drenched day (last Wednesday, since you ask) but we had such a good time that day that it only made us all the more resentful for what might have been, had the gods smiled upon us

Budleigh Salterton, btw, is a complete charming place, a sort of Southwold-for-the-West-Country. And it did also have the added benefit of making me and 'im indoors feel quite young as we set off sprightly-like for our nightly pint of Otter ale in the Salterton Arms with the septuagenarian and octogenarian locals.