Recently in local area agreement Category

I attended a hugely enjoyable event held by Westminster Briefing in respect of the Portas Report yesterday morning.  Yet again I wasn't very clear why I'd been invited to speak (sometimes I think I'm just the court jester) but I felt it was probably safe to do so, given that I was following David Morris of CLG, who actually knows something about the Portas Report; and that I was to be followed by Michael Weedon, of the British Independent Retailers Association, who actually knows something about independent retailers. 

This simply allowed me to be, as the press office of Tower Hamlets would have it  "sweeping and opinionated" and "bilious" in respect of the future of our town centres and high streets.  


On the eve of the publication of the National Planning Policy Framework, UK Regeneration receives news of the most excellent denouement to the ongoing saga of the Lopen planning spat (see blogs for 9 and 23 February 2010 and then 8 and 30 March 2010): a press release stating that the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) has found South Somerset District Council (SSDC) guilty of "maladministration in respect of its failure to adhere to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations".  

It is a serious period of transition for me as we gear up to go on site with the first UKR pilot.  I am clearing the decks.  This week I chaired my final meeting of the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust, after nearly five years during which it has been my honour and privilege to serve that fine community.  

And, though I say so myself, I think I leave SK in pretty good shape.  And in pretty safe hands. With the amount of visible progress being made, South Kilburn is seriously becoming a "good news" story: multiple cranes can be seen swinging into action every morning and we have nothing short of a phoenix rising from the ashes of a crumbling 1960s council estate, with the decant programme now significantly underway, under the stewardship of the London Borough of Brent, as master developer and landowner.

Put out the bunting.  Nottingham city council has been on the Bob Martins again. And hurrah for that!  A new economic plan for Nottingham was launched at a business summit in the city last Friday, putting the emphasis firmly on growth and aiming to be "the blueprint for prosperity over the next 10 years".  Extra cheese sandwiches all round I reckon.  Quickly now. 

Sadly, I was unable to be there in person (and not just because it was a 7.30am kick-off!) but UKR was well represented.  And I hear it was a right shot in the arm. Nottingham city council, in the driving seat, sees private sector solutions as vital to many of the challenges it faces and has opened a consultation - or "a conversation" (nice!) - with the private sector over the coming weeks. 

There were about 100 senior guys from the private sector there at the summit, showing real support.  As ever, the Nottingham family sticks together and is always on-song, even in the face of a public sector document.  One business commentator summed up the report thus: "Too many recommendations, but the heart is in the right place."  And that seemed to be the general view.

Recession is a pretty normal state for me. After all, I graduated into a recession. In essence, I was poor for the three years that I was a student, I was dirt poor for the three years that I was a student politician, and then I was poor for at least another five years in my first two or three jobs.

In fact it wasn't until I left the grit and dust of the London Docklands Development Corporation to join Stanhope in dear old Bruton Street in 1988 that I began to taste a little luxury. I will never forget it. I left my soulless semi in Beckton and rented a room in a house with some posh girls near Chiswick Park. It was 1988 and I began to develop a taste for champagne. I bought a Russell and Bromley handbag. It was - I fondly imagine - a bit like coming out of some Eastern European state to live in San Tropez

So being poor is my norm really. Or at least it was. And I was very struck by a quite wonderful man who was at the local government gig with me on Monday. His name is Graham Burgess and he is chief executive of the Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council (yes, it is "with" rather than "and"; the acronym for his authority being BWD rather than the more obvious BAD).