The economy, Local Enterprise Partnerships and the role to be played by property professionals in the recovery, led discussions when 60-plus members attended the RICS North West CPD Day, at Knutsford, Cheshire.
Keynote speaker for the day was Louise Morrissey, the Director of Land & Planning at Peel Group and a board member of the Cheshire & Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (taking the lead on employment land and infrastructure).
Louise has been with Peel more than 24 years and clearly knows every inch of the property/construction sector landscape.
Her summing up of the current economic climate and its effect on the sectors was clear. Risk averse banks are still hurting, while low confidence and a ‘low activity equilibrium’ has lead to little growth and increasing unemployment. In her view it will be a slow recovery, a long haul with weak growth.
So, the question is ‘what can property professionals do about it’? The answer is to work with the reality of the situation and make the most of the changes being made by the Coalition.
The government is reducing red tape and state control while at the same time promoting a private sector-led recovery. Out have gone the regional spatial strategy and the regional development agency and in have come the LEPs – admittedly with much less resource and a remit not to be a replacement for RDAs.
The quickly introduced Enterprise Zones will help new and existing businesses grow more freely, in addition Local Development Orders should help to free up regulation in other areas. Louise sees the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) as the main area where positive change can be achieved through simplification of the current overly-complex, ‘nightmare’ of a planning system. She described it as an expensive, tedious barrier to growth and called for the NPPF to herald not just a policy change but also a change in attitude towards development.
Development of new offices, shops, factories and in particular housing is a fundamental tool to help the country solve its current economic crisis. The industry must not allow development to be ‘demonised’ as it has been in parts of the media since the publication of the draft NPPF.
She welcomed in particular the presumption in favour of sustainable development and the default answer to an application for development being ‘yes’.
The Cheshire & Warrington LEP has 14 board members with 11 of them from private industry, education and the third sector. As well as Peel, other companies represented include Grosvenor Estate, Tata Chemicals Europe and Bentley Motors. The priorities for the LEP are business orientated; business investment, infrastructure and connectivity, a skilled productive workforce and promoting Cheshire & Warrington as THE place to do business in a deregulated atmosphere.
Louise is the lead board member for employment land and housing which comes under the Infrastructure and Connectivity Group. She said: “I believe these areas are fundamental to successful business growth.”
The growth ambitions for the sub-region have been identified to 2030 and these are to increase employment, increase population, building new homes and increasing Gross Value Added from £20b to £30b.