I was invited to speak at the National Planning Forum at the Local Government Association yesterday on the theme "What next for planning?". Honestly! It was another of those "What would I know?" moments. I shouldn't really have accepted the invitation, but I do like the cerebral planning mob, and my ego got the better of me (flattery will get you anywhere, as you well know, Mike Hayes).
I was pleased to hear our own EG regeneration commissioner Graham Chapman, Nottingham city council deputy leader (and cabinet member for regeneration) on the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday giving a spirited defence of the city centre, as the sixth most popular out-of-London shopping destination in the UK (CACI data). A furore has been started by the Local Data Company which published a report yesterday saying Nottingham city centre has a vacancy rate of more than 30%, which would give it the highest void rate in the country!
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.
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.
I dedicate this blog to Jonathan Bull Diamond (a great real estate professional, who has done so much to help establish UKR) of Jones Lang LaSalle, who has been remonstrating with me recently about not sufficiently appreciating some of our northern towns and cities.
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".
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.
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.
