Thursday saw the biggest UK advisers launch a campaign to inject real diversity into property. Across town, Women in Property laid bare similar plans. Why? To counter claims the industry remains “male, pale and stale”.
Over breakfast at the National Portrait Gallery, Women in Property and DTZ unveiled their plans to tear down the glass ceiling. Lunchtime at Derwent’s White Collar Factory in the City of London, saw the chief executives of CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Jones Lang LaSalle, Knight Frank and Savills commit their organisations to “changing the face of property”. They are putting up money, time and reputations in support of the cause.
This week’s initiatives are a public recognition that property believes it has a diversity problem. It is to the credit of everyone involved that there is a willingness to tackle the issue in public. Credit too to the graduate who bravely dropped the “male, pale, stale” bomb on an audience made up in large part of senior figures who ticked at least two of those three boxes.
But is property any worse than other sectors? In some respects, yes. The latest Estates Gazette/Cobalt Recruitment salary survey (p54) shows that the pay gap is widening in this sector. The difference is now 24% – £12,166 – up from 18% last year. The average across the economy is 15%. In professional occupations it is 16%; among corporate managers and directors it is 21%. You might expect property to sit somewhere in the middle of that. It should. Encouragingly, Cobalt expects that gap to narrow next year.
All this activity took place on Equal Pay Day – the date on which women, who on average are paid 15% less per hour than men working full-time, effectively stop earning for the year.
Much has been written – on this page and elsewhere – about why diversity matters. An industry that, for whatever reason, fails to include or attract both genders and all classes, ethnicities and sexual orientations will only limit its appeal to clients that are more broadly representative. And given property’s customer base straddles every sector, geography and organisational size, the price of failure would be colossal.
• Chatter about Twitter is legion. Even in property. It is not just the IPO which values the micro-blogging site at $14bn, it is the impact it is having on disseminating, discussing and dismantling property news and arguments. Our salary survey highlights the extent of its penetration. One in three property professionals now uses the site; one in 10 does so every day. Meanwhile, my #notontwitter campaign is helping persuade more and more propcos and individuals to join in. I’d bet that number will rise significantly over the year ahead.
• This week’s supplement on the British Property Federation’s 50th anniversary is a richly deserved celebration of this sector’s most influential lobbying organisation. It is also a fascinating romp through recent history. Pulling off the publication had its moments. Lining up 13 current and former BPF presidents for a photograph last month was like trying to impose a formation on a primary school football team. And it perhaps offered an insight into Liz Peace’s lot. Congratulations to everyone who has contributed over the decades.
• The PRS bandwagon rolls on. As think tank the Policy Exchange urged innovative thinking to help deliver 1.5m new homes by 2020, Manchester city council was preparing to create the UK’s largest private rented sector scheme to date.
The council – and the HCA – is seeking developers to turn a sizeable chunk of the former Ancoats textile district into homes for rent. At 3,000 homes, it would be twice the size of the Athlete’s Village in London.
It is proof that there is momentum in the PRS and is a strong indication that it will work at scale outside of London and the South East. Expect more to follow.
damian.wild@estatesgazette.com
