EDITOR’S COMMENT I’ve been thinking a lot about progress this week. Has the industry – the country – moved forward enough? Has it moved forward at all? Or are we slowly slipping backwards?
The thought was sparked by an e-mail from Tim Lowe, the former Knight Frank graduate who now runs property guardian business Lowe Group. His e-mail was a reminder that it had been a decade since we ran an experiment to see if he could live in Zone 2 of London paying a monthly rent of £500, including bills. The e-mail not only made me feel incredibly ancient but made me reflect on a decade of development.
Or, indeed, lack of.
When it comes to the Lowe Cost Living experiment, progress has been poor. Probably worse than poor, actually. We take a look back at the project this week and share Lowe’s reflections on the situation now. Today, it is highly unlikely that anyone could live safely and securely in London’s Zone 2 for £500 per calendar month, including bills. Energy alone will cost £500. During his experiment, Lowe had to live in some pretty tough places, from a rat-infested guardian scheme to a utility-light canal boat and security-free horsebox. Today, we pondered whether even those “homes” would be affordable.
“Ten years on, the landscape appears to be worse,” says Lowe. “Generation Rent should have been a once-in-a-generation issue, but affordable renting is now an even greater challenge for Generation Z as they enter the workforce, exacerbated by the fact that many of those trapped renting a decade ago remain no closer to getting on to the property ladder.”
So no progress there. A very definite step backwards. But what about elsewhere?
Our MIPIM coverage reflects on how the annual conference in the oftentimes sunny south of France has changed over the years. Was it becoming more diverse? Were there fewer blue suits, gilets and Y chromosomes parading up and down the Croisette? The answer was a resounding yes. Definitely more balance that a decade ago, but still such a long way to go.
And that seems to be the wider message when it comes to diversity. A government-commissioned report, which landed just a week or so after MIPIM, revealed that organisations were pretty much just ticking boxes when it came to diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace, with “interventions” being shown to have little or no impact or, in some cases, being counterproductive.
Not to be entirely discouraged, we set about talking to a handful of diversity leaders across real estate to find out how they are ensuring that meaningful change is being delivered in the industry. They talk a good game – as you would expect – but I still have a little niggle that progress is just too slow and that “meaningful” doesn’t translate to “actual”.
Gender pay gap figures (with reports due by 4 April), may give us some indication on progress but I’m not holding my breath for a giant leap forward.
But I can’t be entirely pessimistic. You know that I’m too much of a believer in this industry to just let an apparent lack of progress on two vitally important issues lie.
If we have slipped backwards or, at best, spent the past 10 years doing some weird sort of running man motion on the spot, then surely now is the perfect time to make a change. This is just another opportunity for us to turn up the volume and to utilise the change in politics that we all know is happening to our favour, to UK plc’s favour.
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