October 2009 Archives

I don't normally read the housing trade press, finding it generally a bit pointy-headed and technical (and, after all, there is a serious limit on how much you can read) but an article in one of last month's housing magazines was edifying. 

Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps (pictured) is on record as saying: "I really don't think we're going to need two agencies." Meaning (I think) that we won't need both the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and the Tenants Services Authority (TSA) under a future Conservative government. 

It would seem the writing is well and truly on the wall for the TSA and its lovely chairman Anthony Mayer (btw does anyone know why the late great John Sienkiewicz used to call Anthony "Sid"? Something to do with them being undergraduates together and ...er.. a shared girlfriend?), since Mr Shapps describes progress under that authority as "incredibly slow". 

It's all a bit harsh: the TSA have really run an exemplary textbook consultation exercise - as instructed by ministers and civil servants and now they're being kicked for it - after all, it is hardly their fault is everything went up the shoot!  

Up at South Kilburn to chair the Partnership Board meeting again last night and the usual comic incidents occurred - mercifully - at regular intervals. Just as well really, since the general outlook in South Kilburn - as elsewhere - is pretty well all doom and gloom. 

Phil Newby (always addressed, at the very least, as "Brother" or "Comrade" Newby; once, last night, even as "Vice Chancellor"), the cynical but loveable old curmudgeon who is director of policy and regeneration for Brent council, declared it "a partnership of poverty" when I made my usual gushy glass-half-full pronouncement on the quality of the relationships engendered.
 
Brother Newby is a real old-fashioned apparatchik of the old school - he would certainly know the difference between the CPGB and the CPGBML versus your average Euro-Communist (this is a test, actually, to see if any of you blogosphere types come on the site tomorrow to explain the subtle nuances and if so - or even if you know the difference but you are keeping shtum - then you are seriously a very, very sad person indeed. Tomorrow the test is: the WRP versus the IMG; essays no longer than 2,500 words please). 

One glorious moment last night was when the lovely Jo Olsen from Brent NHS Trust was explaining about the fierce cuts in the borough's NHS budget (with huge grace actually, despite being the bearer of bad news), she said: "The GPs budget is usually about £45m before the cuts, and that's before we even begin to do drugs." Well that got us all going. Gallows humour I guess. So very juvenile. So much fun. 

When our kids were small, 'imself used to always hanker after being a lock keeper. His dream was simple: he would eschew "structured finance" in PFI (whatever THAT is anyway !) and spend peaceful water-lapped afternoons, shepherding various weird and wonderful boatee-types up and down some god-forsaken stretch of canal in some forever-sun-drenched idyll.

His days would be punctuated only by the chug-chug of the motor cruiser, the occasional pint of real ale, and the friendly greetings of the boatees, all suffused in bonhomie as a matter of course. 

My mate Sue used to puncture this bubble in double quick time with the blunt assertion: "Tell him he can't. Unless, of course, he buys the bleedin' lock."

I was always amused by this, but 'imself was - I think - a little crushed. These days he's stopped vocalising his dream; I don't know whether he no longer aspires, or whether he's been defeated by the response of my mates.

How wonderful to hear from my old friend Cllr Paul Scully, Leader of the Conservative Group at LB Sutton (and all round diamond geezer) who is likely to be leading Sutton Council after the next election. Thank you for coming on the blog, Paul, I'm immensely flattered.

And I am glad to say that Cllr Scully is one of a breed: there are a number of newish or soon-to-be emerging leaders, notably of outer London boroughs (although I understand also witnessed elsewhere) who are seeking to reconfigure their deal with their electorate, their contract with their residents.

And this is a very good thing. We badly need some brand new thinking in more-for-less Britain, as we face a 25-year public debt crisis.

Public services take place in public space and if we are to continue to afford such services, we're going to need way, way, more participation from the public; we may even need to begin to introduce the concept of residents as partners in the management of our boroughs. After all, we're all in this fine mess together.

And why shouldn't we pull our weight alongside our public servants, at the very least to enable them to do their job. Why is the community volunteer the exception rather than the norm?

Britain has been getting grumpier and grumpier as a nation for at least five years and there is a general (and pretty misplaced) sense among the British people of their sheer entitlement to public services.

My lovely mate John Holmes, chief executive of Hull Forward, writes to tell me of his gig on the panel at the Northern Regeneration and Renewal SummitConference talking about the HCA Single Conversation. What a toadie! Honestly, the things he'll do to curry favour! 

He reports that Hull is on track to have the first HCA Local Investment Plan in place in the HCA Yorks and Humber region. He stops short of adding "so ya sucks Leeds City Region", but I know well that the competition up there is pretty fierce, and I bet his staff are thinking it at least.

Well good on him. John sends me regular snippets about Hull on the basis that he knows I was at university there and I have a Soft Spot. Ever since the promotion of Hull City Football club to the FA Premier League, he always insists on referring to it as "Yorkshire's Premiership City" and you do have to smile. 

It is a genuine and perpetual sadness to me that I don't really "get" football. Football is currency and there are few opportunities that I would normally pass up to make a connection with folk. But I just can't do it.

Terry Leahy's point last week (made in respect of schools but, frankly, universally applicable) about the smaller-the-better when it comes to back offices, is utterly brilliant. And timely of course.

Mr Leahy practises what he preaches. When I went to work for Tesco (in the back office, naturally, I hasten to own up!) I was immediately - and to my immense horror - rushed off to undertake a thorough induction training in a store local to my home.

Blimey ! That knocked any Mayfair-Jenny nonsense (picked up from West End developers) out of me, I can tell you!

And at Christmas, every member of professional support staff, at Cheshunt or elsewhere, from the most junior right up to Board level, is required to go into store to support the operation, whether stacking shelves or packing old girls' groceries (actually this is the most sociable and rewarding of the tasks by a country mile !).

Now, leaving aside how useless I was in-store (I believe I may have been a genuine liability, actually. Once I dropped a bottle of hugely expensive Chateau Neuf de Pape which shattered all over the store floor) this was an annual powerful reminder of the raison d'etre of the business: if we didn't focus on selling beans and toilet paper then we didn't have jobs, simple as that!

Terry Leahy used to frequently hold breakfast meetings for groups of his managers at 7.30am to discuss the issues of the day. One time I wasn't quite late but I was the last there (it being a bit of a schlep from Chiswick to Cheshunt) and the only place left at the table was next to Terry Leahy himself.

I have a good friend (and BURA Board member) who is very senior in regeneration and who lives in a village outside Manchester.

His three lads attend the local primary school in the centre of the community.

He has no complaints about the quality of education his three boys receive but he is greatly exercised by the role of schools in our communities generally, and the role of his local school in particular.

Apparently there is a well-established Under-12 Football Club, a pukka outfit, in the local league and recognised by the FA and what-have-you, who have been refused permission by the head teacher to practise or play in the grounds of the school, even though they do not need to deploy any staff or have use of the changing rooms.

They have been refused, point blank, presumably on grounds of insurance or some other red tape and the poor team have had to make other, far less convenient, arrangements.

To say that this is a crying shame would be something of an understatement: this is a lost opportunity to consolidate the school's position at the heart of its community, the very community on which it depends for support.

During the mid-90s (post recessionary) period I went to work for Tesco, supporting their site acquisitions activity in south east England. There was a sort of inevitability about this since the only people doing any development AT ALL in the UK at that point were the food retailers and, frankly, the sole question was: which to join?

I'd recently (and, I like to think, reluctantly) been made redundant by Stanhope and 'imself had just been made redundant by the Beckwith lads over at the London & Edinburgh Trust. We had two kids under five at that point and a huge mortgage. Needless to say, I was very grateful for the job.

My experience during the three years that I spent with Tesco (in both Cheshunt and Welwyn Garden City) was quite quite invaluable and has served me brilliantly well ever since. To say that I suffered the worst culture shock but that I learnt a huge amount whilst working there, woud be a bit like saying that Keith Floyd liked the occasional glass of wine !

I knew about offices-and-regeneration but I now needed to know about retail-and-regeneration. I went from working on one scheme in two years to running 70 new stores and 45 extensions at any one time. It was a baptism of fire really.

Do remember this was only a short time after John Gummer had introduced his totally masterly PPG6 (now PPS6), curtailing the development of conforming food stores out-of-town (possibly the most popular planning policy ever introduced - with the British public, that is, sure as hell wasn't popular with the folks working in the property departments of any of the big chains !).

I commited a huge faux pas (one of many really) on my very first day, when the name of Michael Bach was mentioned in a team meeting (Michael was senior planning adviser to the  Environment Secretary at that time, the techical draftsman of PPG6, and the weekend running partner/site visitor of my wonderful friend and mentor, the late great, Geoff Marsh) whereupon I unwittingly purred "Ooh what a lovely man", before I could bite back the words.

All in all we had a great time at the Place West London conference on Tuesday. Some very good workshop sessions in the afternoon at which I learnt a lot, including one wonderful moment when the irrepressible Gary Yardley of Capitals and Counties described himself as a "builder" which amused me so greatly that I immediately promised to put it in my blog (although I will not use the prefix "hairy ***ed" - even though I did at the time - as I am a laideey after all !).

And then an excellent final plenary session chaired by Paul Finch, the new Chair of CABE, with Jason Stacey, Leader of Ealing council, Erika Lewis of the LDA and your own correspondent, yours truly, on the panel.

I was impressed anew with Jason Stacey, of whom I already had a rather favourable view of stemming from my Park Royal days; he strikes me as sensible and innovative and prepared to be entrepreneurial with his local authority assets in more-for-less Britain.

He has been giving council tax money back to residents and matching this cash-back scheme with a "shop local" project to boost the takings of the Ealing retailers. I have asked for details of this scheme as I think there may be a good mechanism for leveraging trade here and, ever in the interests of sharing best practice, I will report this in a later blog.

Hot news, straight from the Place West London conference at Chelsea Football Club as our very own Peter Bill chaired proceedings with his usual grace and aplomb. He is such an old hand, he had a bon mot for every speaker.

After Richard Barnes, Deputy Mayor, had spoken he said "to sum that up then, we don't want the third runway, but Crossrail would be nice".

To the ever-ebullient Dennis Turner, chief economist of HSBC, he protested that "the last time we met, you said things weren't going to be that bad!".

To the charming Surinder Arora, chairman of Arora International (a large hotel group) he said "don't worry, you'll be alright, the London Plan says we need another 20,000 hotel rooms".

Of David Lunts, London Director of the Homes and Communities Agency, he said: "he's a one-man recession buster", although after David spoke he did acknowledge that "perhaps you do have rather a hard job". Oh Pierre's a caution! You just have to smile.

David Lunts told us that housing ministers in recent times have lasted, on average, 117 days, which means that John Healey is about a third of the way through (incidentally he also told us that London is the most unequal of all the English regions, which I'd never thought about before but clearly must be true).

Whether or not the Conservative Party is ready to govern (and I must say I'm actually pretty encouraged by what I saw last week), one of the things that must be welcomed with open arms by all regeneration professionals is the pledge not to move ministers around at the drop of a hat.

I was a bit dismayed to find how much housing associations were out of favour at last week's Conservative Party Conference. Having worked with many housing associations over the years I would contest that it really is not fair to view them all as a problem; very many are very well run and are committed to providing decent housing (and all sorts of other interventions) to help the poorest people in this country. And I will name names if pressed. 

Obviously all sectors have failures - organisations that over extend themselves, are poorly run and get into trouble - and it seems that the gossip circulating the conference bars about Genesis (which seemingly has only survived by being given large handouts of additional grant by the HCA) is affecting the reputation of the whole of the housing association world.  

I picked this up with friends in the RSL sector at the weekend, and I won't bore you with the detailed explanations that I got, but a few things struck me:

First, the rate of failure of housing associations is tiny and the amount of money recently injected by government to ensure that housing associations could continue to house the poorest people in our communities is nothing as compared with the amount we have injected into the banks.

This week at the Conservative Party Conference, Stewart Jackson MP, Shadow Spokesperson on Regeneration, outlined "three levels of governance", which he presumed to be of particular relevance for the regeneration sector.

But this was by no means clear (I only came to this conclusion because he said it to an audience full of regeneration folk).

I took careful notes but I am still puzzled.

Apparently, the first level is to be central government, the second level is to be "directly elected Executive Mayors in the 12 largest urban conurbations (sic)" and the third tier is to be "Economic Prosperity Boards".

For this latter (as we had no idea what he meant!), Mr Jackson cited the Southampton and Portsmouth model (PUSH) as an example. (As an aside: he also said that the Tories were still keen on TIFs and ADZs but that he "can't come up with the money" - however he did reassure us that the Conservatives were "totally commited to Local Authority Bonds". Good news for my friends from Kent.)

What are we to make of these "three tiers of governance" I wonder ? Putting to one side the strange lack of mention of local authorities (incidentally, my advice to my clients is always NEVER bypass your local authority), the "directly elected mayors" thing, in particular, begs questions.

Are these to be alongside the mayors already extant in the UK or what ? It seems (at least on the face of it) obvious for London to have a mayor but is Boris one of the 12 then ?

You will, I know, be thoroughly relieved to hear that the Conservative Party Conference this week wasn't all hard work for Sadek.

You would expect me to squeeze in a couple of parties, at the very least, and I wouldn't wish to let you down.

Indeed, I did manage to take in an excellent bash run by the Spectator and CB Richard Ellis in partnership with DLA Piper.

Yes, there was champagne (hurrah!) and, yes, there were members of the Shadow Cabinet present, but as the one was not allowed to be associated with the other at any stage, be assured that we did not enter any danger zones (I knew you'd be concerned).

It was truly a bonus to see Cllr Paul Scully and his team from Sutton council again (see this entry on the Regeneration Blog).

We had a great chat and an update on how things were going with their campaign (pretty well by all accounts) and then Paul and I had the "we're all bloggers together" moment, which was kind, since he's a highly respected Tory local government spokesman and - after all - I'm only your old mucker.

Amidst the banter though, we had (another) serious discussion around inward investment and the fact that Sutton will soon be truly on-the-front-foot with their mission for growth.

I outlined my latest thesis, which is that there will be two sorts of local authorities after 6 May 2010, under localism: one group who are Open For Business to the property industry and one group who are.......er....not ! And of course the lads agreed with this (hardly rocket science) analysis. Clearly, the London Borough of Sutton will be in the former camp.

Andrew Ludiman of King Sturge clearly Knows a Thing and I was pleased and flattered that, at a Conservative Party Conference fringe meeting no less, he singled out Paddington as an exemplar for partnership working for our Age of Austerity.

For years I have been meaning to write up the Paddington experience but there just are not enough hours in the day. Perhaps I'd better get a grip.

Adjacent land-owners in regeneration areas, said the Ludiman, should be stitched together with the panoply of the various powers of the relevant public sector agencies to form a robust partnership vehicle, fit to deliver real results in a joined-up fashion.

Well, needless to say, I like this a lot! A real lot! But it did take me back to the summer of 1997 when, having persuaded all eight landowners in Paddington to form up into a pack -somewhat assisted by the late great John Sienkiewicz from the Government Office for London threatening to call them all in to the Secretary of State if they didn't come quietly - I took my proposition in to Bill Roots (Remember him? Remember Sid Sporle?), the then Chief Executive of Westminster City Council.

What about it then, says I to Bill: would Westminster like to dance ? Would they join with me in forming a public sector-private sector partnership, pretty please ? (I did, of course, have my beady eye on the current Single Regeneration Budget spending round, SRB4 I think it was).

In common with a number of commentators I, too, think there is a real buzz around Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, despite the rain, and I am certainly learning a lot !

You'll have seen the coverage of George Osborne's "New Austerity" speech; the word among the Party Faithful is that this is brave bold stuff but that people don't think the country is ready.

In the words of one very senior local government politician: "we're all too soft". Well I sincerely hope that's not right as I think we're all doomed if so! Oh dear oh lor, the scale of the task is daunting.

Rocked up to a great Regeneration Fringe Event at lunchtime on Tuesday, run with a rod of iron by the ever-energetic Susan Brown of SBM.

Eversheds and King Sturge, together with Geoff Mulgan (now of the Young Foundation) were providing the backing vocals to Stewart Jackson MP, Shadow Spokesperson on Regeneration.

A cri de coeur: we really ought now - finally, finally, finally - to sound the death knell on the "Age of Entitlement". Please let us grasp this nettle. We can't put it off any longer. We just cannot afford it anymore.

It might not be as headline grabbing as the bonuses-for-bankers travesties but, arguably, it's as insidious and corrosive to the recovery of the UK economy (because it is so much wider spread), is the all-pervading culture of entitlement.

Final-salary pensions, for instance. How on earth can we expect our kids to pay for these whilst they've also been left with cleaning up the planet ? And what about the soppier aspects of employment law then ? (as one HR practitioner once said to me, in respect of a woman with a track record of disciplinary actions the length of your arm, "It costs nothing to fill in the forms, Jack").

And, of course, this "the world owes me a living" culture is endemic in the public sector (although prevalent in many large corporates too !) and, naturally, is more attenuated, the more senior the public servant.

Yet another close colleague of mine was made redundant yesterday (from an international firm of surveyors. No, I will not name names!). That makes six (arguably seven) of our number, from the BURA board alone. And even though it is a large board, this is a truly whopping percentage of very senior practitioners.

A completely certifiable maniac came in to see me at CBRE. It was knockout !

I had heard a lot about this bloke, David Barrie, who has a heavy duty television background, as he had produced the Castleford programme for Channel 4 some time back with some of my old muckers.

Apparently during this experience he had a "Road to Damascus" type conversion and has turned his back on the telly. He now spends his whole life producing  innovative regeneration schemes.

If you think about it, the antidote to so many so-called "regeneration professionals" who sit at their desks (deep in their comfort zone) producing feasibility studies and masterplans could be someone with a background as a TV producer.

A TV producer absolutely HAS to deliver, takes no hostages and maxes out any resources available. And to a firm deadline. Dynamite!

David Barrie designs and delivers initiatives with an emphasis upon creative excellence, community engagement - on and offline (another blogger of course!) - creating opportunities for capital growth and building movements for change.

His weird and wonderful stable of clients include property development and investment companies, local government, non-departmental Government bodies, housing organisations, not for profits and media producers and broadcasters.

It came as no surprise to me that David has created and run projects valued at over £14m. More to the point - and crucial to the future of my sector - he has been credited with leveraging over £250m in new investment in towns and cities.

His work has featured extensively in the media (natch!) and shared as best practice in urban development at conferences in Asia, Europe and U.S.A.

This bloke may be messianic, but you have to love him for it. He may be stressed out of his mind, but he is the future. He is a revelation. It's not a comfortable life he leads but he is very driven. Gawd alone knows how he feeds the kids !