Pomp, ceremony and another planning bill: this week’s Queen’s Speech had everything. Well, almost everything: a collaboration bill might have been the best enabler of all.
The government hopes the snappily titled Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill will help it deliver 1m homes in England by 2020. That delivery will require more than placing the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing – and indeed more than the bill’s other pledges around compulsory purchase and neighbourhood planning. It will require unprecedented levels of collaboration between the public and private sectors. Capitalising on both sectors’ (not always overlapping) qualities will be key to success.
There are signs this is already happening. From the Government Property Unit (where former British Property Federation chief executive Liz Peace can often be found) to Transport for London (now home to Cushman & Wakefield’s William Jackson), the public sector is importing private sector thinking to ever greater degrees. This week, Network Rail joined the roster, pledging to recruit two property experts as non-execs. That’s welcome, but it should consider going further.
NHS Property Services might be a beacon here. Chris Kane, Martin West, Neil Sachdev and Mike Strong (ex BBC, Drivers Jonas, Tesco and CBRE respectively) are non-execs. The exec team can boast of experience drawn from BT, DTZ, Cushman and Serco.
Importantly, there is public sector experience there too, but it’s the sort of line-up that sends a powerful message of intent when an organisation seeks to capitalise on the commercial value of its assets.
Brexit worries? What Brexit worries? UK retail sales in April were up 4.3% year-on-year, way ahead of expectations.
The rise had little to do with June’s referendum, but the fact that numbers weren’t harmed by uncertainty was encouraging in itself.
Meanwhile, a poll for the London Evening Standard this week found 55% of respondents saying they would opt to stay, up from 49% last month. Bookies are more reliable than pollsters these days and Paddy Power Betfair put the chances of our staying in the EU at 74%.
More reliable still in capturing the public mood are cabbies. And there is a London black cab driver who claims to have polled 647 of his passengers in recent weeks. His findings? Some 53% are Remainers, 23% Leavers. The rest, presumably, sat in the middle seat.
We have 33 more days of bickering on this. And at a fascinating Brexit debate this week, hosted by Allsop, there was passion, detail and disagreement. In the Leave camp were Conservative MP James Cleverly, economist Patrick Minford and Richard Tice, head of Quidnet Capital and co-founder of leave.eu, a campaigning organisation in favour of Brexit. For Remain were Labour MP Emma Reynolds, former JP Morgan Cazenove head of real estate investment banking Robert Fowlds and Charles Gallagher, chairman of UK housebuilder Abbey.
Fowlds made the most comforting point of all. Staying in the EU would be the best outcome for this industry but, in the event of Brexit, the inevitable, immediate 10% fall in the value of sterling would drive a fresh wave of inward investment into UK property. Win-win then, in the short term at least.
Congratulations to RICS director Nick Talbot, who has reached the top of Mount Everest at the third attempt, becoming the first person with cystic fibrosis to conquer the world’s highest mountain. Talbot’s first attempt in 2014 was thwarted by an avalanche, and his second by the earthquake that struck Nepal last April.
In a Twitter exchange (me behind a desk in London, him halfway up the Himalayas), he offered advice that would apply to all areas of work, life and mountain-climbing: “I would recommend others go for first-time success and avoid stress of trying three times like me!”
Catch up with Talbot and help him reach his target of raising £100,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on Twitter @CF_vs_Everest.
