Sunak raids the magic money tree

EDITOR’S COMMENT If I hear “We’re getting it done” one more time, I think I might vomit. We had such high hopes for Rishi Sunak. Here was a smart former Goldman Sachs analyst who was going to give us a Budget that we might actually believe in. But what was presented by Sunak in the theatre that is the House of Commons was a Budget that seemingly had access to a mythical money tree. Every two minutes another new multi-billion-pound fund was unveiled, followed by announcements that taxes were not being raised on fuel, booze etc. All the crowd-pleasers. See also: Budget 2020: What real estate needs to know It was a great Budget for investment. By my scribbling calculations as Sunak kept picking notes from the money tree, there is going to be trillions of pounds’ investment for UK people, services and businesses. Hurrah! The Tories are getting it done. But hang on a minute. How? I counted a lot of C words in Sunak’s Budget statement. Coronavirus was mentioned almost as many times as getting it done. So too was change, credibility, co-ordinated, coherent, comprehensive, challenge, climate change, carbon… but the one C word I didn’t hear was cost. How much is all this investment going to cost the country? Now, I’m not saying the country doesn’t need investment. It really does. But where was the discussion about how the public sector engages with the private sector to get it done? To get that investment? Where was the talk about collaboration, about utilising the skills of the private sector to help level up this great country of ours? A country that has one of the highest levels of regional inequality in the world. Of course, it may be in the many thousands of pages of supporting documents uploaded to the Treasury website – or even in the communities and housing secretary’s planning reforms on 12 March – but it needs to be somewhere. And maybe Sunak did speak to that, but all I could hear through the promise of magic money was a BoJo parrot squawking “we got it done, we got it done, we got it done”. All that was missing was a “na-nana-naa-nah!” at the end of each squawk. Something to grab on to But hidden amid the noise were some (not enough) announcements that the real estate industry could grab on to. The much trailled suspension of rates for small businesses was welcomed and then immediately batted down as not enough, yet again. (Perhaps not quite getting it done, eh Sunak?) A £400m brownfield fund to support the development of new homes and the long-awaited West Yorkshire deal was something more universally welcomed. Commitment to long-term investment in the regions is absolutely vital. Although, despite throwing the phrase “levelling up” around like it was going out of fashion in the weeks following the General Election, I counted just seven mentions in the Budget. Clamp down on PWLB finance Also of interest was the quiet launch of a consultation into how local authorities use the Public Works Loans Board. EG figures show that since 2013, councils have spent more than £7.5bn on commercial real estate, most of it using the cheap PWLB finance. But government now wants to clamp down on that. Despite councils having their budgets cut by more than 50%, government doesn’t seem to think it fair that they should be able to buy commercial property for rental income. It wants to revisit the terms of the PWLB to ensure that local authorities use it to invest in housing, infrastructure and public services. I’m all for that. But councils should also be empowered to make commercial decisions, provided those decisions provide income to be invested back into local communities. That’s what devolution, levelling up and getting it done should be about, right? Preparing a Budget in less than a month, and amid the coronavirus hysteria, was never going to be anything less than a challenge for Sunak. So while I find myself still feeling a little nauseated at his delivery of it, I will gently doff my hat to him for getting it done.   To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette