Tag Archives: Government

May 26 2010

Nottingham and the new Government

I blogged a few days ago about the new Government and in particular that impact on property.

Castle College Nottingham

As more news has emerged over the weekend, it seems that two local employers may also be hit.

I think we had known that our RDA, emda were at risk as the Tories had always stated that the work they did could be done by the town halls. But the National College for School Leadership might also be at risk – the latter costs £105m p.a. to run. The writing might be on the wall as their web-site announces “A new UK Government took office on 11th May. As a result the content on this site might not reflect current Government Policy”.

I have had many dealings with emda and have to say that I think that the Government is wrong. They have a valuable place in the local economy and have had a real impact on our locality. I had first hand experience of their impact when the Highfields Automotive and Engineering Academy (owned by Castle College) was built. emda provided a significant grant to make the facility happen. It did create real jobs and attracted Toyota to Nottingham. It is said for every £1 it spends £9 gets added to the local economy – and in 2008-9 some 2,630 jobs were created or safeguarded in the region.

I also had dealings with the National College when it was built in 2000. I haven’t been involved since, but in theory it was a laudable idea – getting a National high quality service operating – maintaining a consistent standard in a purpose built property. My issue with the building at the time was the amount spent on it – which was, as I recall, one of the most expensive education buildings ever constructed in Nottingham – over 50% more than anything else!

What happens next will no doubt unfold, but the loss of these two institutions will not be great for Nottingham…

And sometimes the maxim, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” would seem to be quite appropriate?

Apr 16 2010

Places and Spaces (big spaces)

On 25 March the Treasury published a report on how public services can work together to save money. The initiative (don’t you hate those) is called Total Place.

At the heart of this new initiative is to see how the public sector can save money or get better value for money. Pretty laudable stuff. There are some headlines emerging as the document comes into the public domain:

Worcestershire Council think they will save 10% by improving property management.
Kent County Council think they will make £278m from property disposals
The North West Improvement and Efficiency Partnership will save £68m in five years
Lewisham Council will save between £6.5 – £15m a year through better procurement

I can see that this is all positive.

But I was with a client a few days ago in the public sector – they were wryly observing that there have been some Government figures disclosed to them about property usage – one department has 100m2 of property per employee! The department?

Allegedly – The Treasury – the same Treasury who have announced this new initiative are the ones with a football pitch each.

Some of Governments property assets may be held for historic reasons and so, whilst the headline is quite shocking (think about how much space that is when you site at your 2m2 desk!) this is not really the point.

The push is going to be to ‘reward’ or ‘recognise’ those organisations who make efficiency savings. This is usually the case – departments are heralded as being pathfinders or leading the way…

But what about the rest of us – who have been on an efficiency saving drive all of our working lives? Or those estates in the public sector which are tightly run. It’s not so easy for them to reduce overheads by, say, 10%.

The point is that that the baseline is wrong. You cannot draw the benchmark at a point in time- you need to look at many more data sets.It is not right to have a broad brush – especiually to those organisations who have already started on the process.

The race began some time ago!

Jan 19 2010

Unhappy with the Government?

There’s news this week that Surveyors have been asked about their view on the state of play with the Government. Results were published in the Bible of the Surveyors week – Estates Gazette.


Only 3.3% of Surveyors said that “Gordon Brown was doing a good job”;
27.5% thought “the Election was an unwelcome distraction”, and;
69.2% didn’t think the election could come soon enough.

Looking back though there is evidence that as a Nation there is a familiar pattern! A survey by BBC/Ipsos Mori asked – “which of these statements best describes your opinion on the system of governing Britain”. You then have five choices – one is “needs a great deal of improvement”. And the percentages…

1973 – 14%
1995 – 35%
2003 – 18%
2009 – 37%

Labour swept to power in 1997 – after a sleaze campaign about the Tories. Expensegate is the 2009 phenomena?

As the Lord Acton saying goes – “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost alway bad men”

It is clear that whichever party wins the election the biggest challenge with be the reduction of Public Sector Borrowing. The Billions talked about don’t really mean anything. But today on the radio someone tried to put it in simplistic terms – “The Government borrows £20million every hour of every day each week..”. Wow!

I believe that the Election will be a distraction we enter the period of Purdue. So to that end, the sooner we get an election – the better! Post election, I don’t think there will be great news. We have been here before and we will survive!