A fantastic journey comes to an end

How to cover 13 years in just 500 words – that is the challenge for my last column for this august publication! Let’s start with the highs and lows of what has been a fantastic journey for me personally and, I would contend, the industry. The lowest points? Finding out within a few months of joining that there was a movement afoot to supercede the BPF with a new, all-embracing property body to be led by the then head of the Property Council of Australia – which fortunately came to nothing. Or the defection of a major member for whom we thought we were providing an excellent return on their investment in our (modest by most standards) subscription. And the highs? Definitely winning REITs for the industry in 2007 – though that was not all my doing, but rather the work of a pan-industry coalition. I have often said that, as a historian, I appreciated the importance of promoting the right ideas at the right time and this was a classic example. Many years of campaigning by the industry had got nowhere but in the “noughties” the time for REITs had definitely arrived – with the way having been shown, surprisingly, by the French – and I and a group of industry stalwarts managed to capitalise on it. But there have been a lot of other less-publicised moments of sheer elation. There is nothing like hearing in the dry words of a chancellor’s Budget speech that plans to legislate to ban upward-only rent reviews from leases have been dropped or that the government has decided not to proceed with their own variant on development land tax, or that stamp duty land tax on commercial transactions was not going to rise. We have not succeeded in all our campaigns. We managed to elevate the case against removal of empty property rates to the front pages of the “red tops” – but other than a few minor and temporary concessions have never managed to persuade  government to stop this ludicrous tax on failure. And I am not sure how far we have actually managed to improve the planning system for our members – though I believe we have definitely stopped it from getting a lot worse. As far as relations with government are concerned, I believe the property industry is in a far better place than it was 13 years ago. And it is going to be even more important for us to have strong representation in the future, as we head into a period of political turmoil that will almost certainly bring greater devolution of tax-raising powers not just to Scotland but to the regions of England and Wales; that will see our industry change in nature as it moves into new areas of property investment in residential, healthcare and other infrastructure; and that will also see our built environment increasingly owned by overseas investors unfamiliar with the complex way in which policies are made in this country. So, if there is a message I would like to leave for the industry it is to urge you to continue to support the BPF as the best way of making sure that property and politics can co-exist. And my very final word – thank you, to you all, for preferring a Brummie in pearls to a smart-talking Aussie from Bondi Beach! Liz Peace is outgoing chief executive of the British Property Federation