Recently in Property industry Category

I was just THRILLED to be asked to speak at the WIMPS (Women in Metropolitan Planning Services) Dinner last night. Gosh. How lovely it was! The chosen name for their group is clearly wholly ironic, for a less wimpy gathering would be rather hard to imagine! In fact, I'd have categorised these ladies as a doughty and feisty force to be reckoned with. Actually they are quite terrifying really and, I would imagine, rather proud of that fact. Under the skilled leadership of Pippa Aitken of Colliers CRE and Alison Blom-Cooper of Fortismore Associates, there was more brain power mustered in that room in Victoria than you could shake an Article 14 Direction at!
 
These ladies give town planning a good name. I was so impressed with them all, felt so very reinforced, felt so much that - ahem - lead had been put back in my pencil (do forgive totally inappropriate sexist expression), that I Tweeted on the tube on the way home that the "brainy birds" should be "put in charge of running the country". Whereupon that well known wag, Richard Aylwin, in a reference to the nursery rhyme, responded to say they might "swoop down and peck off your nose"! Well, he's a surveyor and a journalist, and he's ambivalent about planners (although rather keen on women I'd have said).
 

I was immeasurably saddened by last night's (truly excellent) television programme on BBC2, "The Secret History of our Streets", which laid out the background to the so-called "slum clearance" of Deptford High Street.  It was the age-old story.  Row after row of perfectly serviceable terraced houses, in a legible street pattern giving space to a successful and prosperous community, had been CPO-ed and cleared, to make way for systems-built blocks of flats; destroying readily improvable houses in favour of these flats (notoriously incapable of being gentrified) and scattering families and communities to the four winds (in the main, the outer reaches of the new towns of Essex but - and this is key - with no regard to keeping folk together).  Nicholas Taylor, a former Lewisham councillor of some 31 years standing (and clearly a very well meaning individual) attempted to make sense of it all for the viewer.  He was defending the indefensible really.  There was some charming footage of him as a young man bounding about the streets of Deptford, with reforming evangelistic zeal shining out of him.  But his defence really fell right away when he recollected how a fellow councillor, who lived "in a big Victorian house up the hill, had been utterly bewildered that nobody wanted to live in these flats".

There was an old boy on the Piccadilly line this morning sporting a canvass bag with the very distinctive logos of Lunson Mitchenall, BCSC and Westfield prominently displayed.  Made me smile.  Without wishing to be rude about the old boy on the tube, I do not think he had ever attended a BCSC Conference (from which this bag almost certainly had come) and he was not exactly the ...um ...sort of person that Lunson Mitchenall, or Westfield, or the BCSC come to that, would really have wanted to be seen toting their logo around.

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.

It is FREEZING here in Cannes, just so you know - I tell you this to cheer you up.  Not that you wouldn't be fully conversant with the weather down here if you'd been following the Twitter feed - you might only get 140 characters per tweet but if thousands of folk are wittering (er... twittering) on the same asinine topic that's one helluva lot of verbiage. I do wonder about Twitter; I know I'm technically on it (the blondes made me) but I don't really get it. (As an interesting aside MIPIM itself is, but of course, trying to rapidly come to terms with social media, in all its forms, the UKR delegation are jointly blogging the "UK Regeneration Massive" on MIPIMWorld, the journos are all Tweeting for Britain and indeed we wonder whether the glossy daily mag "MIPIM News" has a future!). Those following the MIPIM Twitter will also know that both the EG and the PW team were on massively delayed trains so the press corps are pretty grumpy.  Nothing new there then! 

So... trains notwithstanding, it was the usual chaos in Cannes on the build-up Monday at the Palais, with pantechnicons and white van man clashing at every turn. You'd think it would have become a bit slicker by now, given how many years we've been at it and how many shows they run each year here, but no. The wheel is reinvented every single time.  

But Gill and I were off and running almost immediately (she's causing a bit of a stir by handing out her business cards which state she is "Head of Love and Laughter" for UKR). London First stole a bit of a march by holding its reception last night, well before the show was even underway. It was hosted by JLL in their posh tent on the beach and it was a quite lovely bash in all respects. Dr Andrew Gould exuding charm as usual, Baroness Jo on very good form and Eddie Lister tub thumping (there was no tub to thump of course but you get the general tone) for London and for the UK economy. Although we seriously struggled to hear the speakers, the torrential rain hammering on the canvas nearly drowned them out (I tell you this just to cheer you up). And in rather a non-career enhancing moment I managed to blank the divine Richard Batten ("you looked right through me" he wailed) which was pretty dreadful really, given how much I love him and how much I owe him (and his brilliant) team, and I am forced to concede that - yes - next year I will be bringing my glasses to MIPIM.

Just as well to get my London moment out of the way on my first night here as I'm having a somewhat non-London MIPIM in the main, as UKR takes the view that London still, just about works in market terms, and it is the rest of the country that needs the regeneration attention and focus. Later today we launch our UKR pilot project in a British city that is decidedly, emphatically, very definitely NOT London. No prizes for guessing.

You won't be surprised. 

Now then, if you don't count today, there are only 23 working days left until MIPIM. I say this just to scare the bejesus out of you all. Did it work?  
 
Preparations in UKR are feverishly underway.  We rocked around to Estates Gazette yesterday to discuss what will be the themes for MIPIM this year and, to be honest, it's rather difficult to assess.  Obviously the Olympics, the recession and the eurozone crisis present a very mixed bag for the UK property industry and it is difficult to gauge the emerging themes and the mood.  

I'm in love again.  What do you mean, you see I'm still a bit loose with my favours?  I only fall in love twice a month these days (after all, it used to be twice a day!) and I am a little more discerning altogether in my old age.  

No, I am hugely in love.  The new object of my affections is Martin Kingston QC, the silky smooth planning Silk from No 5 Chambers. Ooh!  He is gorgeous! A more fragrant and dapper figure you could not meet!  So very clever.  And what a mellifluous voice; a voice like Belgian chocolate!




The New Year continues on its sluggish January way. I don't know many folk that aren't seriously struggling to crank it up.
And we are only just beginning to catch up with a few things snuck out on press releases by CLG just before Christmas.  Honestly, anyone would think that the department was trying to bury bad news. And actually, most of it seems like pretty good news.

One of the releases (put out on 21 December) is that a Peter Schofield has been appointed to be CLG director-general for neighbourhoods. A quick straw poll around the regeneration lags quickly confirmed that none of us know him.  And, sure enough, he joins CLG from HM Treasury, where he was director of the enterprise and growth unit.

We may well be experiencing tectonic shifts (and I'm not just talking about my head this morning, after yet more Christmas partying yesterday!).  No, the major shifts to which I refer are in property investment trends. 
 
First, there was widespread reporting this week on the trend towards less investment in house-building firms. Citigroup revised its "buy" recommendation in both Barratt Developments and Bovis Homes, prompting share prices in both companies to fall.

It might seem a little early to be thinking of MIPIM but I've learned the hard way that to get best value out of it all you should start before Christmas. And as I keep shouting at anyone who will listen, if you're Hell-bent on regenerating the UK, as we are, then now is the moment.