Fools, buffoons and inward investment

For those of you who look the other way when hot air gets spewed out, there’s been an ongoing spat between Nottingham City Council and the Government over the council's refusal to comply with guidelines saying local authorities should publish online details of all expenditure over £500
The principles have been well and truly buried underneath a playground-level scrap between Jon Collins, the leader of the council, and Grant Shapps, a junior minister.
An innocent victim of this dignified debate (so dignified that the words ‘buffoon’ and ‘foolish’ have been used in official press statements) has been the Nottingham property industry’s attendance at the biggest property and investment show in Europe, MIPIM.
In years past, the Team Nottingham delegation has combined property professionals like surveyors, civil engineers and architects, with representatives from the city council, its inward investment wing and the city’s public-private regeneration company.
The delegation has been based in a large motor yacht in the harbour at Cannes, the French coastal resort where MIPIM takes place. It has been funded by a mix of council money and private sponsorship.
Last year, that council money amounted to around £30,000. To put it in perspective, it is less than one-tenth of the money spent by city councils like Birmingham.
According to Grant Shapps, Nottingham’s £30k amounted to the public’s money being used to fund a council ‘jolly’ to the South of France.
I have news for Mr Shapps: the council is going to Cannes again in around a month’s time.
It won’t be paying a penny, though. The presence of its widely-respected inward investment head, Lorraine Baggs, is being wholly funded by the private sector.
What does this tell us? Let’s cut to the chase: the ‘debate’ about whether or not Nottingham should go to MIPIM is almost wilfully naive. The real question underneath the Little Englander nit-picking is this: do you want your city to attract new investment which will bring jobs and money? Or not?
Now, Nottingham does have some basic economic advantages over its main regional rivals. One of the reasons why, all other things being equal, it is always more likely to attract inward investment is that it’s bigger – bigger physically, bigger catchment, bigger talent pool, bigger universities, bigger professional support, bigger range of corporates, bigger local authorities, bigger experience.
In bigger cities there is a greater possibility of a business being able to satisfy its requirements than there is in smaller locations.
(To put that into perspective, Birmingham has exactly the same advantage over Nottingham that Nottingham has over Derby. It’s all relative.)
But Nottingham is not alone in having a certain economic heft. Sheffield does. Bristol does. Leeds does. Newcastle does. Manchester and Liverpool are bigger still. And if there are cities of a certain size in the UK, multiply ten-fold on the continent.
It should be obvious by now that the idea that you can simply sit in the Market Square and wait for the next inward investment to turn up is barking mad. You have to get out there and make the best pitch that you can.
Which is what developers and property professionals do. But they cannot – and should not – be doing it on their own. The first question a big inward investor is going to ask any developer or property agent touting a site in Nottingham is: Have you got the backing of the council?
Why? For one thing, major development takes time, time is money, a delay because the council doesn’t like the idea means wasted professional fees on a large scale. So if council planners don’t like it, the inward investor’s choice is to either fight a battle or go elsewhere.
But having a council on board doesn’t just mean it is willing to advise on the best ways to solve planning dilemmas. Its inward investment team will also offer advice and information about the local workforce, travel, relocation, useful contacts and what it’s like to live in Nottingham.
While agents and developers can show an inward investor sites and buildings, the council fleshes out the picture of what it will be like to actually do business here.
It should be obvious by now that private and public sector have to act as a team in this intensely competitive field.
They are doing so at this very moment in the hope of attracting a very big inward investment into Nottingham. They will be doing the same at MIPIM.
And they really don’t need a playground scrap.