October 2010 Archives

I was dead busy yesterday, and despite everyone shouting at me for a view, I was seriously struggling to find the time to get abreast of the White Paper publication Local Growth: realising every place's potential (formerly known as The Sub-National Growth White Paper - I'm so very relieved they went for a snappier title).

Some 24 Local Enterprise Partnerships were announced, which is more than had been tipped, but it still left massive gaps across the country, particularly stark in some of the North East, the South West and East Anglia. Oh, and London of course.

Well I've yet to digest the White Paper fully (and I don't understand why it was solely a BIS publication and not joint with CLG, as was the press release). But I thought it set the right tone.

That's if you disregard the bit on page 18 which asserts that "the government is committed to an "orderly transition from the RDAs". One of my correspondents shrieked "this must be ironic!".

And certainly, news from the front is that what is going on out there could hardly be described as "orderly".

I was rather thrilled to be asked to participate in MAPIC this year, as I've never been before (17-19 November, Cannes).

Reed Midem is launching the Retail in the City;summit, an event at MAPIC for private and public sectors where participants will "share experiences and best practices" and examine how to "develop sustainable urban retail" together. So this is right up my street (no pun intended) as you may imagine!

In laying the foundations for growth in our economy, creating and regenerating sustainable urban retail in city centres and what Retail in the City terms "outlying areas" (but I would call "local centres") is vital.

I have been blogging-on as much, ever since I started. And, as the international dimension is central to the work of UKR, we are living proof that there is much to learn from other local authorities from around the world.

Various financing models for public-private collaboration exist in Belgium, France and the United States. To give you just one example, we imported Business Improvement Districts from the States in the early noughties, we need some new ideas now; so what else is there on offer?

Rather a plausible speech altogether from the prime minister yesterday at the CBI conference. But, as ever, we cry out for the detail.

I was somewhat warmed by Mr Cameron ruling out a "sterile debate" about laissez-faire government versus hands-on government.

I'm old enough to remember the point in the early 1980s when Michael Heseltine talked about "intervention at breakfast, lunch and dinner" and it struck me then, even at my young impressionable age, as slightly daft posturing barnstorming rhetoric.

Of course the government is always involved, silly to think otherwise, the real question is: WHAT form should that involvement take?

The very best line was: "In the weeks ahead, we will be setting out how we will bring a new emphasis on well-being in our national life, and how we will work with business to spread social and environmental responsibility across our society." Oooh the elegance of it all!

Well it is now only a week until Sir Bob Kerslake officially takes up residence as Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and already, last Friday, he identified the first senior posts to go following the reduction in the department's operating budget announced in the Spending Review.

This certainly indicates intent, although a cursory glance at the current CLG structure would show you would not have to be an organising genius to cut a swath through it!

The number of director general posts (Sir Bob's direct reports) will be cut from six to three, staff were told, and administrative budgets for CLG are to be cut by 33% over the four years to 2014-15.

There will also be reductions at the next most senior grade, director, where the current 21 directors (next tier down to DGs) will be reduced to 15 under the changes. Sir Bob himself did the briefing.

The new top team was not named. Instead, a process will take place between now and Christmas to select the directors general and directors who will fill the most senior posts under his leadership.

Given the crisis we are facing in housing in the UK generally but London in particular, it is indeed good news that the Mayor of London has announced he is setting up a Mayoral Housing Investment Taskforce.

The group is to be charged with assessing the ramifications of the Spending Review and the likelihood of severe reductions in the affordable house building programme post-2012. 

The taskforce is to explore alternative forms of housing finance for affordable housing delivery,  the delivery of major regeneration, and the maintenance of the supply of new housing through the period of deficit reduction.

It will also look at developing alternative models, which move away from the current government grant model, that may enable delivery of affordable housing and regeneration, as well as exploring how to lever in private finance. 

The taskforce will be chaired by Peter Rogers of the LDA, and will have the glittering array of David Montague of L&Q, Nigel Hugill of Centre for Cities, Richard Parker of PWC, Richard Capie of the Chartered Institute of Housing, Nick Salisbury of Barclays, Nick Jopling of Grainger, Kevin Ramson of Rothschilds, Leon Clifton of Capco, Richard Blakeway of the GLA, Stephen Bullock representing London Councils and David Lunts of the HCA as its members.

And it will report in three months.

Now, putting to one side that this is a very high powered set of individuals with a lot of brain power who we are lucky to have consider these issues; and putting to one side that many of these are personal friends and close colleagues of mine; and putting to one side that this group looks suspiciously like the old HCA Steering Group on the PRSI (Private Rented Sector Initiative), dear reader, do you not see a glaring problem with all this?

It's getting a bit boring now. The Spending Review I mean. One old sage commented to me "never in the field of political journalism has so much been written by so many to such little effect", and it is the case that we are not getting any sparkly new analysis.

I really wouldn't know about "double dips" and such like but I would just like to get on now and, despite the constraints,in the very teeth of the constraints, try to lay some foundation stones for growth in the future.

As Simon Heffer predicted in yesterday's Telegraph "what we are told will happen today does not exactly have "recovery" running all the way through it" and so it proved.

Sooner or later, we're going to have to look at growing things again, even if that work is largely undertaken by unpaid volunteers aka Big Society. I'm game. And a lot of people out there are. We don't want the Jarrow marches, we want a framework within which to give people's lives a purpose.

It reminds me a bit of "Dig for Victory". Hmmm....wasn't that small government and big society? (Believe it or not, I am only half joking here)

Ross Sturley (bless!) sent me a waspish observation on the £400m that is to be added to the Regional Growth Fund. He says "... which just about brings it up to the £1.5bn the last government had promised through the RDAs...?"

Well, there we go. Mr Osborne did not surprise us with his Spending Review. Why did we think he would?

We'd all been so carefully managed with the leaks and the trailers. Danny Alexander did not make a "mistake". We have all been lulled.

And, actually, there were rather a lot of reasons to be cheerful despite the fact that there was no mention of the word "regeneration" or "renewal" in the entire document....

A significant simplification of local government financing on the part of the CLG has brought an end to all ring fenced budgets, principle among these of course is the Working Neighbourhoods Fund and the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI - NOT as one wag once had it "the thing that hangs out of your bummy").

There will now be three main sources of funding for regeneration going forward. First among these is funding for the HCA to honour their existing commitments (the interesting thing here being that the receipts can be recycled, so not quite as pared-back as it sounds).

Our Not the White Paper consultation period draws to a close in the next few days. And then we start the onerous task of matching it up with the outcome of the CSR tomorrow. It's a tough call.

One thing we will be arguing very loudly is that regeneration is a task for the whole of government.

The DCLG (and its predecessors) has always taken a leading role because of the importance of the spatial dimension to the policies.

It has also had responsibility for acting as the eyes and ears of government in local government and the regions (inherited from the old Department of Economic Affairs and reaching its high point in the Government Offices). This has allowed things to drift a little.

Well, as expected, the tedious speculation continued to mount through the weekend around the contents of next Wednesday's CSR report. Now, only hours away, of course.

Zero is expected in explicit terms for regeneration. And very cold comfort for housing.

However, smart money seems to think there may be something about incentivising private rented housing (although the Treasury moved quickly to close off any avenue of reform which costs money, such as stamp duty changes, tax treatment or s106 obligations).

Well, we all know only too well that the UK faces a housing crisis. I bought my first house at 28 (and I was later than most of my peers) although admittedly this was a very long time ago.

Now the average age of the first time buyer is fast approaching forty. How do you fix this housing crisis when there is little money available from either public or private sources? In London alone, there are almost one million Londoners on housing waiting lists.

There is a desperate need for new approaches. For a couple of years now, the private rented sector has been touted by those-in-the-know as the panacea for all our woes.

It's nothing short of rabbit-in-the-headlights about next week's CSR now.

All normal endeavours seem to have ground to a halt as we await the dread report on Black Wednesday. What's the betting it will be a massive anticlimax, then?

Journalists and pundits keep asking me what will it all mean for the property (and regeneration) industry. What do I know?

I don't have a crystal ball but my army of armchair analysts seem to fall into roughly two camps as to their views.

The first camp are the pessimists who warn that much more of the property industry is geared off public spending than we had thought; sardonic mutterings about all being doomed, "slash and burn" and "double dips".

The second lot are a little cheerier and express the view that private sector development is still large in size (as a sector), depends on the health of the overall economy (and not simply on public contracts), and will recover as the economy recovers.

The crunch question is this: do we think that reducing the deficit will liberate some growth?

Some powerful cases were established at Place West London this morning.

As David Lunts said in his opening address, Ross Sturley and Steve Webb are to be congratulated on pulling off a fantastic achievement: corralling 200 major stakeholders from across West London into a whole-day event to debate their future.

And in this market! Truly extraordinary.

Under the stewardship of Peter Bill in the chair, the case for HS2 going to Old Oak (see blog 17th August) rather than Euston was pretty well hammered home. Rather elegantly so, in fact.

Crossrail made the case for linking HS2 to Crossrail. BAA made the case for linking HS2 to Heathrow. TfL made the point that Euston really doesn't have the capacity and as Peter pointed out it all pretty well added up to....HS2 has just GOT to go to Old Oak.

Steven Greenhalgh, Leader of LBH&F was sitting in the front row during this panel discussion and kept heckling in support. And he reinforced the case when he got up to make his own presentation (made me laugh when he said, later, about White City, "I can't read my own slide so you'll have to read it yourself, but rest assured: lots of jobs, lots of homes, lots of excitement!").

I'm very busy answering questions about the UKR Not the White Paper for regeneration but I will have to seriously break off well before tomorrow, as I'm speaking at the Place West London Conference at Chelsea Football Ground on the subject "Does West London need a Local Enterprise Partnership?".

And the organizers tell me that our session is a sellout, with the greatest number of takers, so we'd better be good.

This is in the wake of the letter of 8th October from Eric Pickles to the Mayor of London (copy the world and its dog) to now say that outline proposals from putative London LEPs are to be received by the 5th November.

Now, West London had already made a bid to the Government to have its very own LEP (even though the Government stated that separate arrangements would apply in London); the original Pickles letter had gone to all the London CEOs and I guess chary local government officers felt the need to put down a marker.

Was in Manchester for the Northern Regeneration Summit (somebody has to!) and was mightily impressed, both by the turn out, and by the optimism on the part of the delegates.

As I've observed before, you do need a preternatural ability to "look on the bright side" in our game, and regeneration types will always try to laugh rather than cry. But it cannot be claimed that it is sane or rational behaviour.

Mark Prisk, Minister of State at BIS (one of our own, of course, having studied Land Management at Reading and done his APC at Knight Frank Rutley before setting up his own development business) gave us a polished performance with his elegant "four measures for business growth" treatise.

He slammed into the RDAs with his statistics on economic growth being the same in both northern and southern RDA areas over the last ten years, and saying that as they (the RDAs) had failed to narrow the gap, then they must be deemed a failure.

I was a little bewildered by all this, as I didn't ever recall the brief of the RDAs being set up to address the north-south divide.

I am very excited. Today, we at UK Regeneration issue our consultative draft Not the White Paper  (NTWP) with some very practical measures to get regeneration in the UK resuscitated.

It is a bold document (and you can get it by just clicking on the draft's title above) so please - everyone - come back to us with all your comments and ideas by 20 October.

We need your contributions by then because we will be sending them along with the NTWP to the minister directly after he delivers the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).

We are saying, first and foremost, that we must learn from our mistakes: UKR accepts entirely that the top-down apparatus that has evolved around the regeneration field over the past 15 years has led to paralysis and sclerosis (sadly, as regular readers of this blog know, we speak from direct first-hand experience of this!).

We find ourselves in the untenable position of supporting an unnecessarily heavy bureaucratic structure, where six people monitor a project for every one person delivering it.

To say that this state of affairs was unaffordable and unsustainable would be a bit like saying that Oliver Reed really ought to have cut back a bit on his drinking. As I never tire of saying, regeneration had, in itself, become the perfect metaphor for big government.

Rocked up to Margaret Ford's party at the BT Tower yesterday lunchtime, with a few of the usual suspects and couple of your notables, to attend the Launch (although clearly, one of many) for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Good bash. You can read the pukka (and very comprehensive) reports on yesterday's various events over on Paul Norman's blog from yesterday.

There were sarnies and rather posh fruit plates. Modest and nicely done. All very much in keeping I guess, although I dread to think how much it cost to produce the full colour A3 brochures.

(They felt a bit "old world" actually; it looked a bit like the brochure we produced at Kings Cross in 1989. Beautiful images and design. Certainly could not have been cheap. And didn't fit in my handbag.)

Matt Black of CBRE and I were chatting to Clive Pane of Drivers Jonas Deloitte who was telling us that the scope of the work his guys can now do (with their vastly extended reach) is miles better (and better paid!) than anything they could aspire to when they were on their tod in DJs.

Last night The London Evening Standard published a poll to mark Conservative Party Conference week, showing that Londoners are deeply divided over George Osborne's spending cuts.

Apparently we are split down the middle over the chancellor's squeeze on welfare and the public sector, with 45% supporting it and 43%against.

Last week I reported on a rather energetic conference, hosted by Nabarro, at which I spoke, entitled London: Hot or Not?. A timely question you might think.

And the eminent economists and bankers there ("the market") bore witness to the fact that the City and the West End of London are indeed both "very hot". And "hot" I might add, in stark contrast to the rest of the country.

So I find myself thinking: Londoners do need to "get real" and stop bleating.

In late May, a matter of a few days after the general election, David Cameron made one of the most extraordinary speeches I can ever remember hearing from a serving politician.

He said he "intended to rebalance the economy" (away from London and the South East) in a subliminal dig at the financial services sector (see blog 1st June).

Reports from the front at Conservative Party conference (see Julia Cahill's excellent blog here) are (I guess, predictably) disappointing in terms of the clarity the property industry desperately needs from Eric Pickles and Bob Neill in respect of regeneration being delivered in this new world.

My old mate Jo Lucas of Willmot Dixon is quoted as seeking "some certainty on government policy." Ahhh. She's a sweet old fashioned girl!

But thus far, the Tories are long on rhetoric but short on detail about anything we care about, such as Local Enterprise Partnerships or Tax Increment Financing.

I guess the Welfare System is preoccupying folk a little, but it is frustrating for all of us out here.

On the upside though, Bob Neill has stressed that he is "open to ideas". Now this is a great relief as we in UK Regeneration are about to give him (and the rest of the team) some right corkers, and in no uncertain fashion! See this blog later this week for more details (says she, darkly).

So no let up in the freeze in development being caused by the coalition's localism agenda.

I've had complaints. Scary Ange has been appointed foreman (on the basis that she is the most outspoken) by the CB Richard Ellis lobby who say that the Sadek blog has been too earnest and worthy recently.

"Where have all the jokes and the funny stories gone then?" was the gist of it, and worse:

My retort is that, if you put UKR (going from strength to strength) to one side, I ain't got that many reasons to be cheerful right now!

But one thing that has tickled my funny bone over the weekend was the rather inspirational move on the part of the gorgeous Peter Mathias (principal of that highly regarded Welsh architectural practice, Holder Mathias) to invite Digby Flower, the Head of City of London Agency for CBRE and his missus, the lovely Fiona, to be the guests of himself and his good lady, at the Stirling Prize Dinner on Saturday night. As I say: what an inspired act! 

And ever since he accepted the invitation some weeks ago, Digby has been in a complete lather about spending an evening with 500 architects!

He was in a frenzy all last week about what to wear. Should he go out and buy a jacket with a Nehru collar, he asked (not entirely in jest) or wear a black button-down shirt and some strangely coloured corduroy trousers?

For those of us still trying to make some sense of Big Society, be aware that we have a great new blogging section on the UK Regeneration website entitled the Big Society Observatory and authored by one "Galileo".

Yes, the Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who Stephen Hawking says "perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science" is now writing exclusively for UKR. How marvelous!

It is early days but the initial postings are hugely entertaining and rather challenging to orthodoxy (which we like!). And we are ambitious in our plan to provide a continuous commentary on the Big Society and how it needs to develop to be a practical means of delivering regeneration.

We will deal with the background and origins of the idea, and will then move on to set out some specific ways forward. Our general stance is that of "critical friend": we take the view that, whether we like it or not, we probably have to work with the current government for some time and so much of regeneration policy and Big Society has cross party elements.

Where we criticise though, we will also try also to suggest options and alternatives. Our aim is to become the "go-to" source for all information and analysis in respect of Big Society in regeneration and related fields. So no pressure there then....

In another part of the forest, the RSA have published a report Connected Communities: How social networks power and sustain the Big Society. They say that building links around highly connected individuals can help to tackle isolation, unemployment and antisocial behaviour more effectively within a community.