Recently in Tax Increment Financing Category

Look, just to clear up any misunderstanding (I have been subjected to rude remarks): that last post suggesting that I might bake a cake was a little in-joke for those of you who know just how incompetent I am in the domestic goddess stakes. 

As insiders will attest, if 'imself didn't do all the cooking chez Elworthy, then my three dear little children would have starved to death long before they reached their adolescence.  

So, for the record then, be clear that I will not be baking a cake for the BURA@20 event on 23 February as I do not wish to be responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning among several hundred of my closest friends.

And while we're in the business of clearing up misunderstandings, can I say now, categorically and for the record: I am NOT, repeat NOT, opposed to Tax Increment Finance (TIF) models. And I will not have anyone saying otherwise. Both I, and the organisation that I have the privilege to chair (BURA) would like nothing more than TIF instruments, now now now, to kick-start regeneration schemes and to get our badly needed infrastructure projects underpinned.  

Soooo.... PBR (recorded in full here) says "the government will continue to examine the framework that would be needed to implement tax increment financing and consider the primary legislation that would be needed if schemes were to be introduced". 

I was right then: we should be relying on this government promising to think about something for all of the last six months of its life with no prospect of delivery of primary legislation. Oh dream on.

Very august members of the property profession will be cross with me for saying this (and I am genuinely sorry, chaps) but I am forced to conclude that TIFs are simply not a re-election platform and certainly not the rabbit in the hat that Labour needs.

The model is long-term and potentially quite difficult to manage. All of which is fairly unpalatable stuff for populist politics.

I've got a queasy feeling about tomorrow's pre-Budget report. 

In recession-torn Britain, we may not get the big top-down instruments we were hoping for.  There'll be a lot of folk crying in their beer if, as suspected, we don't get an announcement for the go-ahead on Tax Increment Finance (TIF) models. 

I sincerely hope I'm wrong here, btw, but, as I say, I'm feeling uneasy. Ever the pragmatist, I have to say: move on quickly! Let's not waste time lamenting the whys and wherefores, let's look elsewhere for other ideas. And I'll go with anything as long as it works! 

When I set up the Brierley Hill Regeneration Partnership, we - the partners - just invented it. We didn't need any primary legislation. And we secured something called the "Parallel Access Route" (aka: a road) for Brierley Hill through that vehicle, among the other less-infrastructury-type regeneration benefits.  

The Loud Lanky Lad is studying economics at AS level and his teacher seems to have a rather marvellous off-the-wall take on the subject. I have been reading LLL's course books, one called "Free Lunch" is particularly enjoyable and - well behind the rest of you I do appreciate - I have finally caught up with "Freakonomics" where I have learnt the secret to a successful blog......

It's all about reciprocity and back-scratching apparently. Oh the parallels!

Talking of reciprocity and back-scratching, I was out on Monday evening hoovering up the Sauvignon Blanc (which is drug of choice, after all) in the Black and Blue with that old smoothie, Alistair Parker of Cushman and Wakefield, plotting and scheming - as ever - about the British Council for Shopping Centres (BCSC) Conference being held in Manchester 9-11 November.

He is currently chairman of the BCSC of course and puts a huge amount of effort in; the old rogue and his team are planning a really good bash up there at GMex. Alistair has the energy of 10 men and he does tell it how it is. I was picking his brains about retail-led regeneration and he confirmed my suspicions that most of the old models are past their sell-by dates and we will need a new paradigm. He says it could be TIFs. I threw in my usual quip (somewhat glib and irresponsible, I do concede) about how TIFs were only a new form of debt and he got very agitated with me. Told me to shut up in fact. How very rude!   

Whaddya reckon to the old TIF (Tax Increment Financing) then? An idea whose time has gone?

There were a few of us practitioners together at a conference in central London on Monday, where Hazel Blears launched her new Regeneration Framework for the UK (and no, she did not arrive on her motorbike in her leathers, much to the disappointment of the senior local government officer I was sitting next to and, no, nobody was rude enough to mention MPs expenses. The very idea!).

The government has given the TIF idea some encouragement (for what that's worth!) when it announced a study into allowing the use of Accelerated Development Zones (ADZs) - a form of TIF - in last month's Budget.