January 2010 Archives

Amazingly, it's now 20 years since the birth of BURA. It all began in the dog days of the Thatcher years, and the first BURA president was the wonderful (and I'm delighted to say, still with us) Patrick Jenkin, the then-secretary of state for the DTI and president of the board of trade (a tall and elegant president if ever you saw one) so we've seen a few cycles in regeneration thinking...

Now at 20, we're celebrating - big style - but we are certainly not resting on any laurels. As this blog has rehearsed, ad nauseam, the environment out there for regeneration is harsher than it has ever been. 

But birthdays are a time for joy and jubilation! 

So we're marking our own Big Birthday with a special event that will look both backwards and forwards, reviewing the last two decades and looking long and hard at what regeneration might look like in the next decade.

We will be examining the policies of the three parties who might influence it, and, naturally, voicing our own opinions (we're a gobby lot!) and those of our wide network of experts and commentators (and, I am thrilled to report, our very own Damian Wild (editor of Estates Gazette) will be a key part of this quest for knowledge).

A big man has died.

Alan Cherry of Countryside Properties was a true gent and one of the few volume house builders who genuinely thought about how people lived and could thrive in new-build housing. One of the few who could talk genuinely and authoritatively about social cohesion.

And he was unswervingly good to Yours Truly.

Frankly, it is a pathetic travesty of the case to say that the world is a significantly poorer place for his loss.

Always with a twinkle in his eye, and sometimes with his tongue firmly in his cheek, I first met Alan when I was Chief Executive at Kent Thameside.

Alan was a big player in Kent Thameside; a progenitor of the "Kent Thameside Association" indeed (the forerunner to the government establishing the Kent Thameside Delivery Board) where he had certainly stuck in for the long haul.

And gawd alone knows you needed fortitude to stay in the game at Kent Thameside.

Alan was developing the Gravesend Canal Basin and Springhead when I was there and I was somewhat overwhelmed (amazed!) when he accepted my invitation to Chair the Kent Thameside Economic Board (a poisoned chalice if ever there was one!) but the bloke had true commitment, as anyone with half an eye could see.

OK, Stefan, you gorgeous thing, wonderful to hear from you. I will respond properly, I promise, but in the meantime... some reasons to be cheerful....

There has been a certain amount of outrage within (renegade) CBRE circles that our own Nick Jopling (head of residential at CBRE) has crept into the blogging fraternity via EGi (traitors!), to report, hot from a US Conference on the American Multi Family Housing Model, in pursuance of the CBRE private rented sector initiative (PRSI). 

Joppers was so pleased about all this, that he couldn't wait to point it out to me in an email from the plane ("I blogged it on EGi to compete with you"). 

My response is to snort with indignation: after all, I never get to go to Florida! Tomorrow I'm doing a site visit in... er...Hackney Wick. Ho hum.

The exchange went as follows:

Correspondent 1 (breaking news): "Jopling is blogging. It's like the first sign of spring. Blogging is now totally uncool."

Correspondent 2 (toady): "The Jopling blog aint a patch on our Jackie's!"

Me (totally incensed): "Thank you XXXX, for loyalty. What a bloody nerve!  I reckoned blogging became seriously uncool when I started but this really is the bloody end!"

Correspondent 1: "You have moved left along the cool wall by association."

Another CBRE diaspora wag was so excited he was prompted to send me the photographic evidence to prove that Jopling is, indeed, the third Proclaimer!

Sorry to be juvenile, but you do have to smile.  

The Policy Exchange has released a study entitled "At a Rate of Knots" which seeks to get commuters to use the River Thames as a mode of transport. Well hurrah to that!

Robert Mcllveen, the report's editor, described the river as "a huge motorway running through the heart of the city", a sentiment with which we can all heartily agree, until we read that he goes on to say "that until now has been ignored". 

Come now, Mr McIlveen, we may have turned our back on the river for the last half a century, but never forget that the river is the superhighway to which London owes its very existence.  Sustainable regeneration is predicated on a thorough grounding in urban history. 

My heart just leapt when I read the words "water-borne Tube line" in respect of the findings.

My once-boss (admittedly, a very long time ago) and ever-hero David Owen (that's Baron Owen of the City of Plymouth to you, matey) has written to me. 

"Dear Jackie" it begins. What a total thrill. Alright, alright, I know I'm one of many thousands of his closest friends! But it's on proper Conqueror, and personally word processed and signed, and seriously came as a shot in the arm to me. I always loved that man.

The substantive reads:

"I wanted to let you know about Charter 2010 website which I am involved in.

"www.charter2010.co.uk is dedicated to seeing any hung parliament, should it emerge, transformed into a stable, more representative and effective government. A government that can deal with Britain's urgent economic problems; not a parliamentary stalemate and the uncertain prospect of a second election. The detailed terms of the Charter, with its two core principles, are on the website.

Another Monday in January and I continue to battle with my big question: whither urban regeneration in the age of caution? Should I rename my opus, currently (struggling) under composition, on the lessons from regeneration for the future (working title: "What went wrong?") to "Love in a cold climate"?

Seriously, I'm not finding many reasons to be cheerful.

As Stephen Sorrell says, on this very blog, in the last few recessions the way out has been for the public sector to focus on regeneration and infrastructure, bringing jobs and economic activity. 

The 2010 agenda must be about more: it needs to be about regeneration leverage - how can the public sector utilise and make more efficient use of its assets, and how can public agencies work in partnership with all collaborators to keep housing supply going, and create better and more sustainable communities?

I know that one swallow does not make a summer, but hot on the heels of Hugill and Butler setting up Urban & Civic (see my blog entry last November), I learn that those two rock-solid performers in the property sector - Mr. Mark ("Herbie") Hancock and Mr Adam Kerr - are setting up a new property company called Talisman Capital.

It hasn't done anything as yet, but is "open for business" as from this week. You may remember Messrs Hancock and Kerr from Kilmartin or Teesland days: really bright lads with a shed load to offer. Smart enough to have business interests in China too......

Sooooo....the lads have leased the obligatory offices on the corner of Brook Street (although Herbie will continue to operate also from his dirty great pile up in the wilds of Yorkshire) and they're starting small: there will be a mere four directors and two non-execs.

The gorgeous Frank Gillespie has also left Kilmartin to join them, and they've secured the services of a first class finance director, who has worked with Herbie before. A formidable team indeed.

A salutary tale for all of us who have been advocating a "bottom-up" approach: be careful what you wish for. 

One of my local authority moles sent me the results of a residents survey, trying to find out what the local issues might be for a relatively small part of his conurbation. Hilariously, one of the perceived issues raised by parents in this particular local area is the "abruptness of the lifeguards at the pool". 

I noted also that a proposed "solution" (to what issue, pray?) is "a Cake Decorating course". 

As my informant says, with mild understatement, "well, we never saw that one coming".

So... alcohol abuse is topical once again!

It has been great having the kidult home from university for the Christmas break; I had missed her terribly and parting with her again this weekend will be such a wrench.

She has been helping me with my book, a history of the regeneration sector (current working title - and I kid you not - is "What went wrong?". 

Oh dear, I'm in such a gloomy place about it all) and she has been such a great support that I will struggle to complete the wretched thing without her.  Was never much of a completer-finisher in any case! 

I'll simply be bereft.

And it was just so nice to have her about, with her dual status as both adult and child an' all. 

She was in the pub with her father and myself and Bernard Hughes, government affairs director of Asda (have I really known him for 30 years? Oh dear oh lord!) where we were having a pre-Christmas snort (as you do) a couple of weeks ago when, in response to Bernard's insistent line of questioning (if you know him, you'll know what I mean, he does this inquisition number to try to elicit how people live - and spend, I guess) she let us all into the mysteries of the "pre-lash". 

I was very interested to learn yesterday when reading the Sunday Times (look, back off, I'm busy, OK? And I'm not the only one to read the Sunday newspapers on Monday or Tuesday, or even Thursday, I see people all the time doing it on the tube!) of the huge number of "hidden homeless" that there are in the UK, in an article, written by an Old Etonian, who is himself homeless. 

My pal, Leslie Morphy of Crisis, had advised the writer that Housing Benefit (which he doesn't receive) was incredibly complicated to apply for and doesn't cover deposits and so forth, and this got me thinking again about poor Dorothy McEwen and her son, and my (strongly) emerging thesis that the headline figures for unemployment or homelessness (which look grim enough), do not account for vast numbers of unfortunates who, for whatever reason, find themselves unable to access welfare systems and therefore do not appear in the statistics. And, whilst this was ever thus, I believe that the problem has become much more acute in recent times.

The other day somebody (who I respect, so that made it worse, of course) described me as the "patron saint of lost causes" and my (admittedly rather feeble) rejoinder was that you had to be a bloody masochist to be in urban regeneration in the UK - especially these days! And this is certainly true. Almost all true regeneration practitioners are a bit self sacrificing not to say a bit messianic; indeed some have definitely got more than a screw loose! And certainly when I first went to Paddington I was told I was stark staring mad (and after the first three years when very little had actually happened I was beginning to believe it....)

But you have to stick with things I reckon. And this exchange got me thinking: why do I continue to fight to make BURA fit for purpose for New World? It's more than a bit of a struggle. Why don't I get a quieter life? And I guess the answer is that I just can't. There's something really compelling about developing a new agenda coming out of the only independent regeneration body which isn't solely about money or politics or urban design. We could be more than part of the solution. BURA has the potential to be a really powerful platform in more-for-less Britain: we have a willingness to engage in a disinterested fashion - with the same energy as, say, the BPF or the BCO or the BCSC, but without the devaluing vested interest element, and not like a government agency such as CABE, which always runs the risk of being the poodle of government.

After all, our members know what they're talking about! They need a voice and a place at the table. And channeled in the right way, they could make a very real contribution to solving our workless and homeless problems.

Happy New Year everyone! I seriously don't think it can possibly be any worse than last year.

Close observers will be aware that for the last few months, like all of us, I guess, I've been grappling with trying to get some perspective on what is happening and how we might respond.

It is clear that 2010 will be a year where we will all have to make some tough choices when the landscape is shifting in front of us in quite a dramatic way.

A General Election in either March or May will focus our minds and I'm looking forward to what I hope will be an honest and frank debate where the options are set out clearly.

I hope that the televised election debates with (some of the) party leaders will stimulate that debate nationally and that we get a substantial turnout and a new government with a real mandate to drive through much-needed transformation.