July 2010 Archives

The politicians, London mayor Boris Johnson and Newham mayor Sir Robin Wales (what an extraordinary pairing!) today formally announced the thing that Clive Dutton has been trailing for weeks: the plans for the regeneration of the Royal Docks in east London, setting out a strategy to secure up to £22bn (yes, £22bn!) of investment.

They will naturally seek to take advantage of the 2012 London Olympics to attract investors.

Apparently the London Development Agency and the London Borough of Newham "have announced they will work together to identify large sites to be sold for development" which seems strangely worded (as if they had been working in opposition to one another hitherto; is there a dark sub text?).

I love the Royal Docks, as regular readers will know (see my blog entry on 19th July). Although, if you put Building 1000 and a few roads aside, it still doesn't look too different from when I was at the LDDC in 1988.

And I will assist Clive to do everything he can in the new arenas created, by the Coalition Government and others, to bring forward this huge tract of London.

With the exception of Nine Elms, the Royals is arguably the last really large-scale strategic site left in the conurbation. Robin Wales said (and it did make me smile): "The size of the opportunity is vast. It is a development area the size of Venice with 12 miles of dock and river edge".

It is a creative time. Yesterday Parliament's Communities and Local Government Committee launched an inquiry into the government's plans for localism and we have all got every excited and immediately begun preparing our evidence.

In the same hour I learnt that my very good friend, Trevor Nicholson at CB Richard Ellis is launching a splendid new initiative. It is a new consultancy called "CBRE Placemaking".

His blurb reads "Our Research-based Placemaking proposition is that we aim to improve values, particularly in less expensive areas, by helping...... to make a place where people really want to live".

He goes on to cite the "top ten" essential placement elements from Number one: Vision through to Number 10: Sustainability, with all necessary points covered along the way, to create a place that is successful on all measures.

Well! You have to admire our man's timing. Talk about finger on the pulse! It is zeitgeist stuff, Trevor.

Given where he comes from (CBRE is the biggest real estate consultancy in the world, after all), he necessarily started with new settlements; he has commenced his evidence base with a study of non-urban new villages of 1,000 dwellings or more.

An eminent journalist called me this week to inquire as to my view of new-build-densities now that the Coalition Government has done away with it all.

I did my best to respond but, you know, I've never really engaged with the concept of numerical density. I take the view that that way madness lies.

I care not for density. Fish fiddle de dee to density (as the Pobble-who-has-no-toes might say).

When I was first engaging with the local community at Paddington, I was at some pains to avoid discussing any issues of massing or density. When I started the project in mid 1997, the land was worth £11m an acre (I dread to think what we'd be looking at now) and it was clear that, whatever my developer partners were going to bring forward, it was going to be seriously dense (and so it proved).

There was just no point in talking to the local community about quantum or planning metrics; these were a given (and it was an island site, nobody's residential amenity was being threatened, nobody's back garden impinged upon) so we talked instead about the community's aspirations for the place, the crucial connecting through from north to south, the opening up of the waterways, the provision of amenities, support for the hospital and - most crucially - the wholesale delivery of jobs and training opportunities.

Yet MORE on Community Right to Build. The debate rages.

A good old mate of mine from university days, the lovely (and very urbane, she is an eminent anthropologist and was some sort of Fellow at Oxford) Dr Charlotte Suthrell writes to me to say "When I heard Shapps on the Today programme, I thought oh god, no please - we're going to end up like France - with clumps of ghastly things plonked on the edge of the village - and I quote you this bit from Lucy Wadham's book "The secret life of France"...

"It was Mitterrand and his minister Gaston Deferre, back in the early days of his mandate, who, in an attempt to decentralise the French state, bolstered the power of little dictators to make or break village life in France.

"Despite a steady rural exodus since the mid-sixties which has resulted in the majority of the population now living in towns, the fabric of French society is still an intricate patchwork of small villages.

"Three-quarters of her thirty-six thousand communes are made up of villages of less than a thousand inhabitants, over whom Monsieur or Madame le Maire may reign supreme.

And the furore continues!

I am even more flattered now as I have been contacted by a VERY senior government spokesperson, to put me right on a few aspects of last Friday's blog.

And I am delighted to be able to report further on this.

First of all, it would seem I was being a bit reductio ad absurdum. Again!

The Community Right to Build policy, far from being cooked up entirely in the one village of Essendon, has been tested around the country "from Cornwall to Berwick and everywhere in-between".

And it would seem that Mr Shapps, who most folk would acknowledge did an admirable job in opposition getting his head around housing policy (always unnecessarily abstruse, don't you think?

I blame those Harrogate people) actually spent several years working on this policy.

I guess he was Shadow Housing Minister during a period when there were four Housing Ministers (see blog 13 October 2009) so he did have a bit of time (ha!) and, it now seems clear, he assiduously tested out a lot of ideas in a lot of places.

Seem to have caused a right furore at the end of last week!

I am always very flattered when people comment on my blog. And particularly so when it's folk of the calibre and expertise of Michael Bach.

I liked very much what James Derounian said too! James, you have made me feel like a bitter and twisted old cynic!

Of course I would espouse the principle of small scale provision of social housing provision in villages.

I guess I've just been around the house building sector too long and I've met far too many venal landowners who get up to tricks.

 I hope James, that you're right and I'm wrong!

(The kidult also says you're on the money about me not understanding how villages operate - which is also a fair cop! This from her experience of living in...er... Exeter).

Blimey! "Right to Build" is a novel idea alright!

What on this earth do you make of Grant Shapps this morning, announcing that the government plans to enable "villages" in England to build homes without seeking council planning permission?

The initiative aims to "provide small numbers of affordable homes in rural areas where high home prices are driving people away" and is "part of David Cameron's Big Society idea of allowing more decisions to be made locally".

Under the plan, villages would be able to form local housing trusts, and hold a referendum to decide if house building should go ahead.

A "large majority would be needed" apparently and on Radio 4 this morning, Mr Shapps said it would be "80 or 90 per cent" in cases of small developments of fewer than 20 homes. The Council for Protection for Rural England (CPRE) is, of course, up in arms (as far as I'm concerned this usually augurs rather well for any policy).

But I am frankly amazed. In this age of austerity, is this government seriously sanctioning (yet more) "rights" without responsibility. This is simply astonishing. Even more astonishing is that (it would appear from the press release) the policy has been cooked up entirely on the basis of the views of those in Essendon, a village in Hertfordshire, which, of course, happens to be in Mr Shapps's constituency.

Nobody is disputing that things need to be done differently in villages to shore up their vitality. But we all know how villages work. "Villages" will not make the decision.

I've been dithering about since yesterday morning trying to work out what to-do about your "Big Society".

The BURA position, until now I guess, could be roughly summarized as "two cheers for Big Society - we think - but what exactly is it please?"

Now, I've just decided to go for it, in a "let's get back to our roots" sort of a way. And this has been somewhat reinforced by the fact I spent this morning in South Kilburn realizing more and more ways that I could develop these ideas with the residents there.

In for a penny in for a pound I reckon. It's not as if we're long on alternatives in regeneration right now.

I have just given a fairly full-on quote in support of BS (as I'm now going to call it, just to irritate everyone senseless) to "Regeneration and Renewal" and have come over all hot and flustered by my bravura.

Dr Evans is on hols, you see, and can't hold me back. And - worse still - we elect a new BURA Board this week so I'm taking a huge chance that the rookies will be comfortable with what I've said.....well they can kick out of the chair if not.

David Cameron's "Big Society" speech this morning was extremely compelling. It really could be the saviour of the regeneration sector I reckon.

 I'd be interested to know what Julian Dobson thought; thank you for your last comment Julian, I agree with your every word, of course, but I seriously struggle to see what to do about it all!

No doubt this will be the subject for much further discussion (and it's been a while since our last lunch).

There's a way to go, but if the idea of Big Society was to be populated cleverly and responsibly, you just never know.

I was also rather encouraged by Mr Cameron launching a "Big Society" bank (even if, according to the Financial Times, it may have to launch with reserves of as little as £60m).

For some months BURA has been calling for a "Grameen Bank" type project to be modelled on the hugely successful project in Bangladesh (reversing conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity) for work among our poor communities in inner city estates. I hope this is what he means.

My old friend Clive Dutton OBE (Big Banana at Newham in charge of Regeneration, Planning and Property, see blog 21 July 2009) has e-mailed me to tell me off about not getting to one of his events (the launch of "Newham Futures") the other night.

I was truly sorry not to have been there as he had a great turn out from the glitterati, despite being severely let down by the Jubilee Line, he had nearly 200 folk from across London's development, regeneration and cultural fields.

I have to say our lad is nothing if not bold. His vision for the future regeneration and economic development of Newham includes a step change in delivery, facilitated by the public sector.

He is seeking transformational economic growth as well as something he terms "changing the socio economic demographic through convergence".

Ooh-er missus! Answers on a postcard please.

But as someone who has been in around Newham (and the Royal Docks in particular, an area "the size of half of Manhattan") for decades it is a great relief to see a fine public servant (and visionary) who doesn't see the place as a problem but as an opportunity and who is as excited by the possibilities, as us old diehards have been for years.

Well! All the machinations of last week (in the wake of the announcement of the "£1bn fund"; as I keep telling you all, don't get excited, the devil is in the Spending Review) would seem to indicate - surprise! - that There Is No Alternative to working in public-private sector partnerships to get anything going AT ALL in the UK over the next few years.

So woe betide any developer out there who has queered his pitch once too often with his host local authorities! I won't say "I told you so" but hey!

Sadly, the gap in culture between the public and the private seems as stark as ever. Starker, if anything.

My very good friend, Martin Houghton, is attempting to put this right through the work of his smart little agency, Management Focus, a sort of interpreting service between the two sectors.

He says that you must start from the premise that the goals and objectives of the private and the public sector are almost always quite different. While both may appear as equally enthusiastic stakeholders in publicly funded projects, each will be seeking different outcomes and methods of achieving them.

The public sector's need to follow due process is not always understood by developers, who are more interested in the results than how they are achieved. Likewise, the constant need for developers to generate turnover and make profits is often seen as mercenary and unappealing by public agencies, rather than as a fact of commercial life.

Rocked up to the Regeneration and Renewal annual conference at the Business Design Centre yesterday and, at first, I thought I'd stumbled into a wake by mistake (well, not exactly a wake, actually, since most wakes I've attended have been rather energetic jolly affairs, most of my departed friends having demanded a "celebration", rather than a lament; perhaps it was more akin to visiting an intensive care ward).

Glum faces, hushed tones, subdued voices. No laughter, no energy, no dirty jokes. Was this really the regeneration sector that I know and love?

Bob Kerslake was putting a brave face on it at the start, although one commentator rather baldly described his address as a "signing off speech".

I'm not sure I'd concur with that exactly but certainly, in this age of uncertainly, the conference took his humorous new acronym "TAFKARs" ("the areas formerly known as regions") to its bosom with alacrity. The closing panel session for the morning was Michael Heseltine (nothing short of a God of course), Nick Raynsford (one of the most knowledgeable people in our field - ever) and the lovely Pam Alexander (looking very pretty and speaking up valiantly for places without cities).

Comic value was added by our Chair, Tim Williams, calling Michael Heseltine "Michael Parkinson" by mistake (which he did, not once, but twice; much to everyone's amusement. That is, with the possible exception of Lord Heseltine).

My last post seems to have caused some reaction. A loyal correspondent has sent interesting material from a blog called "Flip Chart Fairy Tales" entitled "the biggest HR project since the 1940s".

In it, one Patrick Butler, clearly an expert in all this, has described the restructuring of the public sector as "the biggest public management challenge since the creation of the welfare state and the NHS".

If folks in the public sector workforce are not among those who lose their jobs, it is argued, they will at the very least, be profoundly and irrevocably affected by the restructuring. "Terms and conditions will be changed, workplaces relocated, employing organisations merged and de-merged, reporting lines and responsibilities changed and, crucially, expectations of performance raised."

Among the immense challenges faced by HR practitioners in public service are the sheer logistics of making so many people redundant, the immense cost, (given that many will get three years pay), the reluctance of many employees to relocate, the potential loss of skills and senior staff who, despite all the evidence, seem to think that such a drastic downsizing can be achieved without any compulsory redundancies.

Sometime during early 2004 or thereabouts, the Evening Standard carried a banner headline "600,000 new public servants created under Tony Blair".

Picking up a copy in Charing Cross, midway through my weary commute home, with an immense shock I realised I was actually one of these in the headline (having taken up the post of CE of Kent Thameside a few months prior)! It felt like a stark statistic.

Now the (seemingly unstable) Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast over 600,000 job losses in the public sector nationally. Things come. They go.

We all knew that significant job cuts were inevitable whoever won the election. But the implementation of job cuts takes fortitude and skill from whoever has the unhappy task of implementing them.

Both are in very short supply.

There is little evidence that any of the parties gave serious thought to the enormous management challenges associated with delivering the most basic commitments to the public through a workforce demoralized by redundancies, pay restraint and reform of the pensions system.

Ross Sturley, finding he has a useful sideline in photo-journalism (well, there is a recession on you know) sent me this photograph with the caption "Cocks. England team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory". Puerile, I know. But we can't help it.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is something the regeneration sector seems rather good at.

Ross and I were having a cup of coffee with the rather brilliant Liane Hartley of Capita Symonds the other day (dear old Shazza had introduced us) who was thrilling us all with tales of her being asked to give evidence at the Cross-Party Committee on Happiness (I swear I am not making this up).

Once again, we were mourning the demise of regeneration (I don't know what the collective noun is for regeneration practitioners, but as soon as we are assembled in any sort of number - that is, more than one - we lapse into the oh-why-oh-why conversation all over again).

BURA has been grappling with the Mayor of London's proposals in respect of simplifying bureaucracy in London.

There is a perception that London governance (under the new rationalising of the regions) will be "other" than elsewhere, with the London Boroughs quietly leaving last week's letter from BIS and CLG on Local Economic Partnerships languishing in the in-tray, at least for the time being.

The model seemingly coming forward for London is an uncomfortable mashup of the national approach to RDAs and the HCA with the role of the democratically elected Mayor.

I guess the arrangements for the HCA in London were always a little ambiguous, and there is a very good case for simplifying the system - both in principle and in response to the need to make savings.

So it looks as if there will be some very real difference between London and the rest of the country (where the government seems to moving towards a very bottom up approach to economic development - Local Economic Partnerships, voluntary groupings of local authorities being the order of the day).

The Coalition Government is attracting some, on the face of it, strange supporters. I do hope they will be made to feel welcome.

In a rather startling blog for "New Start" my old friend Jonathan Rosenberg has written an extraordinary piece entitled "Collective ownership is the new consensus" in which he espouses Big Society. This is - ostensibly - a bit of a surprise as Jonathan campaigned for the Labour Party in the General Election!

"Does the timing and prominence of this...." he asks "suggest that local people should be elevated above their elected representatives, and workers above their bosses?

"Is the programme part of a coherent philosophy? Has a new consensus emerged on the need to empower people through collective ownership to solve problems more effectively, a consensus that is now at the heart of government policy? The evidence, however curious, suggests that the answer is yes.

"The promotion of social action, and handing assets over to workers and communities is now a central plank of public sector reform. This startling development heralds a real opportunity to advance the good old cause of collective ownership."

I once got into terrible trouble over a story that a regeneration trade magazine had picked up (from one of my own team, thanking you, Mr Phipps!) when I was CE at Kent Thameside.

It was April 2005, a month before the General Election, and a journalist had got hold of an idea I'd been floating (ha!) for some time, regarding the possibility of slinging a cable car across the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury.

Actually the idea had come from a member of the team that had been responsible for the BA London Eye (and he'd imported it from a project in Japan, I think, or somewhere out of the east anyway) so it had some legs, but it was pretty outlandish just the same, the sort of "grand projet" idea that I would chuck out there occasionally, in sheer desperation, to try to lift aspiration locally.

So.... it wasn't really much of a story (and, actually, was so NOT a story that the Kent Messenger had run it six months prior, when it had dropped like a stone) but the trade journalist had alighted on it at a sensitive time - four weeks prior to a local and national election - and, having given the (then Labour) leader of Gravesham council a tug, who then phoned me to mark my card in no uncertain fashion, I was compelled to call the journo concerned (and then his deputy editor. And then his editor) and eat humble pie big-style in an attempt to get the thing spiked.

It was all very unfortunate. I wouldn't quite go so far as to say I nearly lost my job over this incident but relations (which were already severely strained) did accelerate due south from that point.

I was greatly encouraged by last Tuesday's Cabinet meeting being held in Bradford - the first to be held outside London by the new coalition government.

Close followers of the EG Regeneration Blog will know how much I favour Bradford, with its fine streetscape and beauteous historical buildings, and its proactive and entrepreneurial Chief Executive of the City Council (and BURA Board Member), Tony Reeves.

The market, in its wisdom, rather passed Bradford by over the last boom cycle. This was a blessing in disguise, with the result that it does not suffer from the scourge of concrete ring roads and or ghastly blocks of empty two-bedroom "luxury flats" littering the place; there is, therefore, all to play for there.

BURA will be interested to see which regional city the Cabinet goes to next. I would urge Barnsley (see last blog) about to be a new Jewel in the Crown, I promise.

To coincide with the trip to Yorkshire the government seemed to be putting a bit more meat on the bones of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) to the effect that the fund would be available for 2011-12 and 2012-3 to help "areas most dependent on public sector employment as the country's regions makes the transition to private sector-led growth and prosperity" as that nice Mr Clegg said. 

Tone and body language was lovely, but this didn't really add much to what was outlined in the Budget.