Forget this week’s Budget pantomime, it’s next week that matters. With ministers set to respond to the Portas Review and issue the draft NPPF, will it be another damp squib? Or could it be a Super Tuesday for property?
Let’s deal with this week’s non-event first. The Budget. It was, by and large, neutral and, the top end of the residential market aside, a bit dull. Mostly there was relief that it wasn’t overly damaging – and isn’t it interesting that we no longer expect our politicians to help, we just hope that they won’t hinder. But that aside, George Osborne’s speech was as significant for what it didn’t contain as for what it did.
Even before the chancellor stood up, we knew about the top rate of tax coming down. We knew about stamp duty reform. And we knew for certain that the draft National Policy Planning Framework this industry craves would not appear.
By the time he sat down we knew, for now at least, that there will be no mortgage REITs and no empty property rates reform. In between there was modest encouragement: the National Loan Guarantee Scheme, further support for enterprise zones, more money for the Get Britain Building Fund and cuts in corporation tax. And there was stimulus for certain sectors that are driving growth in London’s occupational market, not least film industry-style tax concessions for the video game community. And given the telecoms, media and technology sector’s importance in London’s occupational market, anything that helps those businesses should help the property industry.
Explicitly property-friendly measures felt as lacklustre as Osborne’s soundbites. He may well have regretted his Wallace and Gromit quip once he picked up a copy of The Sun on Thursday morning. And at £150m, support for tax increment financing could be so slight as to be pointless.
So it fell to others to strike a better balance in their assessment of the potential economic impact. KPMG’s chief economist Andrew Smith summed it up best: “Reduced chance of doom, slightly less gloom, but certainly no boom.”
And that renders next week so much more significant. The draft NPPF will definitely appear on Tuesday; the government’s response to the Portas Review will appear on or around that date.
On the NPPF, we know from what George Osborne told the Commons this week that 1,000 pages of guidance will become 50. There will be a presumption in favour of sustainable development. And the government remains committed to ”protecting our most precious environments”.
But it will require a level of political skill seldom seen from this government to strike a balance in practice and in tone that delivers a document that satisfies developers and the National Trust-led opposition. A renewal of hostilities is in no one’s interests.
And then there is ministers’ reaction to Mary Portas, whose proposals earlier this year to reinvigorate the country’s high streets included calls for town centre teams, a national market day and business rate reform. The prime minister has already indicated support for Portas’s recommendations, describing them as a clear vision.
Anything less than full endorsement of what is a set of modest proposals would be pointless.
• The Estates Gazette Awards 2012 are open for business. Entries for the regional adviser categories are in and the editorial team has drawn up a nomination list of regional property companies. Now all we need are your votes. Which businesses have served you well? Which have impressed? Have your say at www.estatesgazette.com/awards .
• Estates Gazette picked up a handful of trophies at the LSL Property Press Awards this week. EGi was named Property Portal of the Year, a ringing endorsement for the improvements that we have introduced over the past several months. Meanwhile, many congratulations to retail and residential correspondent Annabel Dixon, who was named Rising Star, and deputy regional editor Nadia Elghamry, who won bronze in the Regional Property Journalist category.
