LREF 2023 | Govt urged to fix up or find a ‘new word for crisis’
The 2023 London Real Estate Forum has opened with a call to “restart the machine” and speed up devolution as the UK struggles to deliver major infrastructure and meet housing targets.
The event, which brings together investors, developers and local authorities and is now in its tenth year, opened this morning with a howl of frustration as uncertainty about the future of the HS2 rail line from Birmingham to Manchester grows.
Around 1,500 delegates – including delegations from Liverpool and Manchester – heard that attempts to meet social and economic values were being thwarted by the way central government works.
HS2: a policy miracle
The crisis over HS2’s future meant the absence of one of the event’s keynote speakers, Manchester City Council Leader Cllr Bev Craig.
Alexander Jan, former Arup chief economist and now chief economic adviser to the London Property Alliance, said the economy was adjusting to new realities “but the arguments that need to happen, haven’t happened yet.”
“On HS2, whatever side you take, the government has achieved the policy miracle of cheesing everyone off,” he said.
“We have to get to grips with these things because there are time bombs coming on energy and business rates, and to achieve certainty we have to confront the failure of the machinery of government.”
He added: “We can’t have one-size-fits-all all policies from Whitehall. For all the faults of local government, it is more transparent, easier to deal with, and they stick around for longer. We need devolution because the current model isn’t going to work.”
Another word for ‘crisis’
Tom Goodall, managing director at Related Argent, said: “What we do takes three political cycles to achieve, and if we can’t get housing delivery right soon we’re going to need a new word instead of “crisis” because if projections are right in three years we’ll be delivering just 100,000 new homes a year, compared with 200,000 now and 300,000 in the government’s target. We need to restart the machine.”
Becca Heron, strategic director for growth and development at Manchester City Council, standing in for Cllr Bev Craig, said pragmatism and partnership provided a solution, combined with a clear policy direction.
“We have to start with a clear vision, and so we’ve now got strategic regeneration frameworks for most of the city centre providing certainty and clarity for investors,” she said.
“This means not doing this plot-by-plot but instead doing it by neighbourhoods. We’ve always been pragmatic about how we can work with government and other partners…and I understand funding has been exceptionally difficult over the last few years, and what a local authority can do is hold fast to its vision.”
Caroline Taylor, a senior Treasury civil servant and project director at the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, said that the scale of public sector debt and the sensitivity created by rising interest rates, meant very real pressures on any infrastructure project.
Later this morning Liverpool City Council leader Cllr Liam Robinson leads a session on innovation and growth, whilst both Manchester and Liverpool city council’s appear in a session on the challenge to opportunity in UK cities.
The afternoon’s centrepiece will be a session on “A New Generation of Confidence” which was scheduled to see an appearance by Cllr Craig.
