Former prime minister Harold Wilson said: “A week is a long time in politics.” And 2015 has offered us 46 of perhaps the most exciting political weeks in a generation: an unexpected victor at the general election in May; an almost clean sweep for the SNP in Scotland; a decimated third party, and an opposition party seemingly intent on following a path into the unknown.
And the upheaval is not over yet. London faces the election of a new mayor next year, followed by an uncertain vote on Europe. Never has politics been so important, and never has it been as relevant to our industry as it is now – especially with the housing agenda taking centre stage.
The problem is that most politicians have to know a little about a lot, and are susceptible to believing populist headlines rather than hard facts. At a recent meeting with a shadow cabinet MP, I was told: “Ninety per cent of London homes are being sold to foreigners,” and: “London doesn’t need Crossrail 2, but Newcastle does.”
In fact, Westminster city council’s own figures demonstrate that the answer to the first is actually less than 3%, and in addressing the latter, I’d ask how else could we cope with the additional 2.4m people forecast to live in London by the time Crossrail 2 would be completed? It is down to the property industry to inform politicians and let them know where we stand.
Property’s prime position
Last week, the Westminster and City property associations converged on City Hall to announce findings from a specially commissioned piece of research that identified the critical importance of London’s property development activity to the UK at large.
The research found that the 11 central London boroughs create an estimated £12.4bn of economic activity each year, equating to around 205,000 jobs. But even more importantly, because the boroughs all work with suppliers throughout the whole of the UK, the full impact of their activities on the UK economy amounts to around £17.7bn gross value added and around 290,000 jobs.
These are large figures, and serve as a reminder that talk of devolution away from London is dangerous at a time when our industry is supporting British steelmakers in Bolton (18,500 tonnes of steel were used at the Leadenhall Building, EC3, for example), brick makers in Birmingham, and ceramic manufacturers in Staffordshire.
This week we also launched our manifesto for the new mayor, in which we set out 25 practical recommendations for meeting London’s growing needs over the years to come.
We have, frankly, been spoiled in London with the two past mayors taking an active and positive stance towards our industry, not least through the use of their ability to call in planning applications where the relevant local authority may have been guilty of making poor decisions.
Worthy successors
Without Boris and Ken, would we ever have seen the Shard, SE1, built, or indeed many other landmark London schemes that have transformed the horizon over the past 15 years? Some already question whether candidates Zac Goldsmith or Sadiq Khan will have the political or personal will to stand up for real estate. It is our job to convince them that they should.
Our manifesto looks at the balance of office and residential use and calls for local authorities to build more social housing and to set viable affordable targets. We have asked the mayor to champion training within our construction industry – why should our children graduate from university with huge debts and no career path at a time when we can’t get enough people working on our building sites? (We have brickies on our sites earning £55,000 a year.) We have called for more investment in infrastructure and stressed the importance for London of getting a new runway built.
Both documents are available to download from the Westminster Property Association website – take a look and join us in reminding everyone why our work is a major contributor to our truly Great Britain.
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Daniel Van Gelder is chairman of the Westminster Property Association
Follow Daniel Van Gelder on @danvangelder
