A shattering silence on this blog for the past couple of weeks because I’ve been up in Northumberland on holiday. There was a shattering silence there, too – in all sorts of ways.
While the rest of Britain was (I’m told) gripped by the riots frenzy there was a smashed window at a small police station somewhere near Sunderland and, er, that’s it.
I stayed in the middle of nowhere a few miles outside Alnwick. Beautiful rugged countryside, so dark only a couple of lights were visible in the distance at night, while the only noise was the distant hiss of tyres from a road up in the crags and the sheep being driven into a different field. Bliss.
It took me a few days to get used to the total absence of an internet connection and an intermittent mobile phone signal, though. But they were an early clue as to why this – and other parts of Britain - remain unspoilt.
The biggest clue was in Alnwick itself. It’s an attractive market town just off the A1 whose major draw is the Castle, where some of the exteriors for the Harry Potter movies were filmed. It’s also the only town of any size for miles around.
What struck me was how few national retail fascias there were on its main shopping streets. Yes, there was a WH Smith, a Boots, a Dorothy Perkins a Morrison supermarket and, outside the centre, a Sainsbury superstore.
But its main retail pitch was nearly all local – a butcher, a hardware store, a kitchenware and furniture business, an estate agency, the usual charity shops, a couple of pubs/bars, the odd local country clothing/fashion store, some gift/trinket shops. There is also Barter Books, which is a story in itself. A clone town it ain’t.
Is that a good or a bad thing, though?
Well, there’s been an ongoing debate about the loss of independent retailers and the dominance of national chains serving up the same flavour wherever you go. Indeed, a government-ordered review into this very subject is currently being carried out by Mary Portas, the former Harvey Nichols branding director who found fame as TV’s Mary Queen of Shops, advising independent retailers.
She’d find plenty to occupy herself in Alnwick. Some of the independents were excellent (notably the butcher, which does a damn fine pie). Some weren’t and they clearly lacked either turnover or imagination (or both).
What that translated into was that there was no compelling reason to go to Alnwick and shop for the sake of a browse and a casual purchase. The independents did not serve up the range or the consumer experience that national chains do.
I’m guessing that the national chains will tell you that the demographic data of a community as sparse as rural Northumberland simply doesn’t stack up for them. They’d ask you to hop in the car and drive down to Newcastle or hop on the train up to Edinburgh if you want the full-on shopping show.
Was my experience that of city people tragically hooked on shopping not knowing what to do? No – it was a story about the way the economy works. Major retailers need big catchments with a good wodge of money within a short drive. If it isn’t there they won’t come.
The independents who do set up shop would need to be very savvy to make good money – especially in a town like Alnwick, where tourism makes demand seasonal.
Yet they clearly survive, and there were few empty shop units that I could find.
Could the debate about independent shops learn something from a place like Alnwick? May be – but I’m not sure it’s an entirely optimistic message.
None of the independents were what I’d call indulgence shops. They were in the main places where you go because you need something. The only independent which you could really call a magnet – Barter Books, the book swap-shop housed in an old railway station – is unique, almost a national institution.
Alnwick’s independents survive because there is little competition. They are small-scale enterprises which didn’t look like they made a lot of money and they benefit from being in the only sizeable centre for miles around.
Tellingly, I suspect that the one Sainsbury store on the edge of the town employs more people than a dozen of the independents in the centre.
This isn’t an argument in favour of big retail – national chains are one-size-fits-all operations who have questions to answer about their treatment of supply chains and their regular failure to invest in great service.
But their absence doesn’t guarantee an alternative high street full of brilliantly run or endearingly quirky independents with a distinctive regional flavour. Some of the shops I saw were either utilitarian or just off the pace.
Good retailing is a mix of good products and great service coming together to provide value, and that doesn’t have to be the preserve of big national chains. But it would take a clever, committed and resourceful independent to meet those criteria.
Are they out there? I'm not sure. And the irony underneath this article is that it was drafted while sitting in Alnwick's newest retail arrival - Costa Coffee...
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
An Irish saga at Southreef
You’ve heard of planners bringing development to a halt, but a foreign government?
We haven’t had confirmation, but it looks like that’s what happened with Southreef on Canal Street, which may be in the running for the prize of Nottingham’s longest-running development saga.
A £30m mixed-use scheme which occupies a prominent pitch in the city’s prized Waterside zone, it features a mix of apartments, offices and other commercial space.
Or it will do when it’s eventually completed. By any measure, Southreef was an ambitious landmark on an important route into the city centre and it ticks many of property’s most important boxes with ease.
Timing isn’t one of them, though. First unveiled in 2005, it finally got underway in 2007. 2007 was, of course, property’s annus horribilis, the year when a tidal wave of mortgage defaults pulled the rug from underneath any investment in bricks and mortar.
The problem for Southreef lies not in the design or the developers, all of whom have long-established track records round here. It lies with its backers, over-extended Irish banks who eventually had to accept bail-outs from the Irish government…in return for security in the shape of some of the assets they had title to.
These passed into the hands of Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (based, ironically, in Grand Canal Street in Dublin). Which is why an unfinished landmark in Nottingham has, arguably, been at the beck and call of the Irish government.
Administrators were called in to take over Southreef Properties, the business responsible for trying to finish the development, last week. One assumes that’s because no more money has been forthcoming from Ireland.
It won’t stop the development being completed. Southreef is already earning money from high quality office occupiers like Crytek and tenants inside its apartments.
Southreef will be a great development when it’s eventually finished, as it will be. Just as it may be a while yet before that happens, so it will be sometime before it shakes off its undeserved status as an outpost of the Irish economy.
We haven’t had confirmation, but it looks like that’s what happened with Southreef on Canal Street, which may be in the running for the prize of Nottingham’s longest-running development saga.
A £30m mixed-use scheme which occupies a prominent pitch in the city’s prized Waterside zone, it features a mix of apartments, offices and other commercial space.
Or it will do when it’s eventually completed. By any measure, Southreef was an ambitious landmark on an important route into the city centre and it ticks many of property’s most important boxes with ease.
Timing isn’t one of them, though. First unveiled in 2005, it finally got underway in 2007. 2007 was, of course, property’s annus horribilis, the year when a tidal wave of mortgage defaults pulled the rug from underneath any investment in bricks and mortar.
The problem for Southreef lies not in the design or the developers, all of whom have long-established track records round here. It lies with its backers, over-extended Irish banks who eventually had to accept bail-outs from the Irish government…in return for security in the shape of some of the assets they had title to.
These passed into the hands of Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (based, ironically, in Grand Canal Street in Dublin). Which is why an unfinished landmark in Nottingham has, arguably, been at the beck and call of the Irish government.
Administrators were called in to take over Southreef Properties, the business responsible for trying to finish the development, last week. One assumes that’s because no more money has been forthcoming from Ireland.
It won’t stop the development being completed. Southreef is already earning money from high quality office occupiers like Crytek and tenants inside its apartments.
Southreef will be a great development when it’s eventually finished, as it will be. Just as it may be a while yet before that happens, so it will be sometime before it shakes off its undeserved status as an outpost of the Irish economy.
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
What those customer services letters really mean...
I’ve been shaking my head in pity at Simon Dare’s vain attempts to get Virgin Media to wake up out of its self-satisfied slumber and realise that when it asks customers for their opinions it might not be a bad idea to turn its ears on.
It’s not fair to single out Virgin Media, of course, because I think we all know that the one area where consumer-facing businesses are always consistent is in being pretty crap at customer service.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s the customer satisfaction surveys, the complaints handling or the new product roll-outs, this is what they really meant to say in that welcome letter...
Dear [insert your misspelt name here]
After carefully considering our own views, we’ve concluded that one of the best ways to continuously improve our business is to continuously empty your pockets (again).
Accordingly, we’ve decided to make a series of changes to your service which will make it cheaper for us to deliver it. That, of course, means that we will have to take a load more money off you.
These clear and simple amendments, which won’t make any difference to anything we do, are explained in the enclosed 96-page booklet of completely impenetrable terms and conditions.
We’re sure you agree that any ideas which improve service will make your life easier. If you can think of any, please tell our customer services team, because they’ve been a bit busy recently trying to flog you something.
If you have any queries about the changes we haven’t made, don’t hesitate to use our new, 13-stage process for getting in touch. Our advisers are always available to talk to you, as long as you call our premium-rate 0845 number, at an hour to suit you – specifically, 3am to 4am on the 12th of Never.
If you have any additional comments about our service, please tell a mate down the pub.
Assuring you of dim-witted indifference,
Mr Illegible Signature
Head of Customer Response Analysis Programme
[C.R.A.P]
Thursday, 14 July 2011
A lot of noise and a real scandal
It involved practices which are indefensible, often beneath contempt, and saw ordinary people suffer unforgivable intrusions and prominent people dragged through the mud for no good reason.
Journalism is a trade where gossip is a way of life, and at least a few of the 'revelations' about News International didn’t seem to me to be revelations at all (not least because quite a few of them – notably Gordon Brown's 'allegations' - appeared in a book published three years ago). Neither are they confined to News International.
Before mobile phones came along, hacking was preceded by private inquiry agents going through the rubbish bins of celebrities and politicians. Dark corners of the Metropolitan Police would exchange information for drinks or money as long ago as the 1960s. And Fleet Street's favourite bars have regularly been propped up by numerous fixers, fraudsters and chancers.
So this modern scandal is, I'm afraid, only the latest iteration of tabloid journalism's eternal desire to find ways of teasing out private, often embarrassing and shocking, information. Sometimes they have done so by routine inquiry, forensic guile or simple luck.
Hacking was not routine or forensic, though. It was brazen law-breaking. In particular, the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone was despicably warped.
Beyond its extremity, the problem with hacking is the dirty 'principle' which lurks underneath it: for entirely commercial reasons, the end justified the means. The News of The World played with fire. Rightly, it got burnt.
The fall-out from this issue is not black-and-white, though, for three reasons.
First, the accusers.
No journalist will enjoy the spectacle of politicians wagging their fingers at the media and offering sage observations about the shameful decline of professional ethics. In that respect, many of them are long-term residents of glass houses and really shouldn't be lobbing boulders (and that includes Mr Brown, whose serial scheming and media manipulation is documented in Andrew Rawnsley's book The End of the Party).
Similarly, it is difficult to take seriously the lofty pronouncements of other media, not one of whom is a disinterested party. Some have unpleasant skeletons of their own.
Yet while their observations may be hypocritical and partial, they are all true.
What I do take huge exception to is the sly suggestion that if national newspapers did this then may be locals did too? This is self-serving nonsense for which there isn't a shred of evidence.
Local newspapers don't need to engage in vile subterfuges because they don't operate at a distance from their community. They depend on a long-term relationship built on respect, and any newspaper which stomped like a hooligan across its circulation area would pay a swift and heavy price. For the regional press, there is no logic on any level in tabloid bombing raids.
The second issue is where you draw the line in terms of privacy - which is, I suspect, what politicians will surely try to do.
Politicians and regulators have grappled with this issue many times before, struggling to come up with a definition which doesn't compromise the right to know or the right to privacy.
The issue has become more complicated still in the online era, where rules in one part of the world have been rendered meaningless by online publication in a different part of the world of the world which is available to all.
The third issue is one of proportion.
It is a clear matter of public interest when a prominent part of one of society's major institutions – in this case, the Press - behaves in an anti-social manner and betrays public trust.
But it is only a part of that institution. The direct impact of its activity is confined to a comparatively small number of people. The indirect impact is that millions of newspaper buyers were unaware of the basis of some of the stories they read.
Nevertheless, the News of The World is now history, so are the practices associated with it. An inquiry into Press ethics might usefully outline the bounds of acceptable conduct and how they should be policed, but I suspect it will draw conclusions recommending practices which are routinely followed by most of the media already.
The day-after-day prominence of the hacking scandal reflects not its importance to peoples' everyday lives, but the navel-gazing tendency of the media and politicians - whose desire to exert influence over the media is riven with self-interest (especially in the wake of their own expenses scandal).
The relationship between public, media and politicians does need to be a healthier and more respectful one. And the phone hacking scandal is a lousy reflection on media standards - perhaps another example of a period when the chase for financial reward led up a disastrous blind alley.
But this 'scandal' will not cause long-term damage to the social or economic fabric of Britain. Communities will not be devastated by it, no one will suffer enduring hardship.
My last blog was about the disastrous decision to deny Bombardier a rail contract. That is a scandal and it will cause lasting damage.
Yet in London, little is being said.
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Bombardier: How Best Value turned into a monster
Derby’s not normally my turf, but I don’t think there can be many people in business around here who haven’t heard about the Government’s decision to give a £1.4bn London rail contract to Siemens in Germany.
They’ll do a fine job, I’m sure. But so could Bombardier in Derby – which, in case the civil servants who signed off this process have forgotten, is just up the road from London.
The decision to send the contract abroad makes sense if you believe in the absolute purity of markets and that European competition rules are sacrosanct. However, the long-term collateral damage those rules are likely to deliver to Derby – one of the UK’s major manufacturing cities - suggests that if you follow this argument to its logical conclusion you’ll also be comfortable with vultures picking over the corpses of the dead. It’s a cost-effective way to get the job done, yes, but the bones left behind are a stark reminder of what you’ve lost.
I’m not going to rehearse the gory details of this awful deal (my colleagues at the Derby Telegraph have, as ever, done a brilliant job documenting the shocking reality).
What is worth wider attention is a letter sent by Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber to David Cameron about the issues which this decision raises.
The letter has been written by Chamber president Ian Morgan, who, as chairman of bus firm Trent Barton, knows a thing or two about transport; indeed, he’s part of a consortium which will run the next tram lines in Nottingham. He doesn’t go in for the ritual condemnation of the EU – he points the finger directly at Whitehall.
I quote: “My Chamber believes that your Government and the previous government are prisoners of highly paid civil servants in London who devise and operate a procurement process prejudicial to manufacturing in the United Kingdom. This ‘London centric’ view takes no account of the need to sustain and build manufacturing activity in the country as a whole.”
This is a serious accusation, and it plays to a widely-held suspicion that while EU rules are bad enough, the way they are enforced by Whitehall makes a bad situation worse.
Morgan says that when Ministers decided to award the £1.4bn Thameslink contract they were not aware of who the bids had come from – in other words, they were making the decision blind. This sounds like a sensible way to avoid accusations of bias – but Morgan claims that a blind process is NOT a requirement of EU competition rules. In any case, I have great difficulty believing that civil servants specialising in transport infrastructure couldn’t have guessed that Bombardier would be one of the bidders.
Morgan also suggests that the main justification for the decision – that it represents best value for taxpayers – is also a disastrously one-eyed interpretation of where the value lies.
Again, I can do no better than quote the letter that has landed on David Cameron’s desk this morning: “Now that we know that one of the consequences of your Government’s decision to award the contract to Siemens may be the closure of the last train manufacturer in the United Kingdom, we would ask that you publish the comparative value of awarding the contract to Siemens against the cost of the destruction of the train manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom.”
Transport secretary Philip Hammond has sought to suggest that he has done no more than confirm a decision delivered by a process set up by the last government. That doesn’t make it right.
Neither is it jingoistic to suggest that this simply wouldn’t have happened in France or Germany. All of the trains, trams and buses procured in France are made or assembled there. And Morgan says 90 per cent of German transport procurement is German.
No one is suggesting that government should support industrial dead ducks; this isn’t the 1970s and Bombardier is not an industrial dinosaur where bad practices are propped up by subsidies. Derby has been a centre for transport engineering expertise for decades, which is why a global firm like Bombardier is based there.
The truth is that the way the public sector interprets best value rules has been a problem for years, all the way from Whitehall to your local council. I can remember a Nottingham-based public body which managed to send a contract all the way to Bournemouth for a routine service which could easily have been done (and done better) in this city.
The only way the Bombardier decision will deliver any real value to the UK is if it leads to a change in the way these rules are interpreted. Civil servants – and politicians – have got to get it into their heads that the maintenance of technical knowledge and specialist manufacturing capacity have an economic value that goes far beyond the price of a single contract - or, indeed, a grotesque obsession with administrative purity.
They’ll do a fine job, I’m sure. But so could Bombardier in Derby – which, in case the civil servants who signed off this process have forgotten, is just up the road from London.
The decision to send the contract abroad makes sense if you believe in the absolute purity of markets and that European competition rules are sacrosanct. However, the long-term collateral damage those rules are likely to deliver to Derby – one of the UK’s major manufacturing cities - suggests that if you follow this argument to its logical conclusion you’ll also be comfortable with vultures picking over the corpses of the dead. It’s a cost-effective way to get the job done, yes, but the bones left behind are a stark reminder of what you’ve lost.
I’m not going to rehearse the gory details of this awful deal (my colleagues at the Derby Telegraph have, as ever, done a brilliant job documenting the shocking reality).
What is worth wider attention is a letter sent by Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber to David Cameron about the issues which this decision raises.
The letter has been written by Chamber president Ian Morgan, who, as chairman of bus firm Trent Barton, knows a thing or two about transport; indeed, he’s part of a consortium which will run the next tram lines in Nottingham. He doesn’t go in for the ritual condemnation of the EU – he points the finger directly at Whitehall.
I quote: “My Chamber believes that your Government and the previous government are prisoners of highly paid civil servants in London who devise and operate a procurement process prejudicial to manufacturing in the United Kingdom. This ‘London centric’ view takes no account of the need to sustain and build manufacturing activity in the country as a whole.”
This is a serious accusation, and it plays to a widely-held suspicion that while EU rules are bad enough, the way they are enforced by Whitehall makes a bad situation worse.
Morgan says that when Ministers decided to award the £1.4bn Thameslink contract they were not aware of who the bids had come from – in other words, they were making the decision blind. This sounds like a sensible way to avoid accusations of bias – but Morgan claims that a blind process is NOT a requirement of EU competition rules. In any case, I have great difficulty believing that civil servants specialising in transport infrastructure couldn’t have guessed that Bombardier would be one of the bidders.
Morgan also suggests that the main justification for the decision – that it represents best value for taxpayers – is also a disastrously one-eyed interpretation of where the value lies.
Again, I can do no better than quote the letter that has landed on David Cameron’s desk this morning: “Now that we know that one of the consequences of your Government’s decision to award the contract to Siemens may be the closure of the last train manufacturer in the United Kingdom, we would ask that you publish the comparative value of awarding the contract to Siemens against the cost of the destruction of the train manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom.”
Transport secretary Philip Hammond has sought to suggest that he has done no more than confirm a decision delivered by a process set up by the last government. That doesn’t make it right.
Neither is it jingoistic to suggest that this simply wouldn’t have happened in France or Germany. All of the trains, trams and buses procured in France are made or assembled there. And Morgan says 90 per cent of German transport procurement is German.
No one is suggesting that government should support industrial dead ducks; this isn’t the 1970s and Bombardier is not an industrial dinosaur where bad practices are propped up by subsidies. Derby has been a centre for transport engineering expertise for decades, which is why a global firm like Bombardier is based there.
The truth is that the way the public sector interprets best value rules has been a problem for years, all the way from Whitehall to your local council. I can remember a Nottingham-based public body which managed to send a contract all the way to Bournemouth for a routine service which could easily have been done (and done better) in this city.
The only way the Bombardier decision will deliver any real value to the UK is if it leads to a change in the way these rules are interpreted. Civil servants – and politicians – have got to get it into their heads that the maintenance of technical knowledge and specialist manufacturing capacity have an economic value that goes far beyond the price of a single contract - or, indeed, a grotesque obsession with administrative purity.
Thursday, 23 June 2011
Champagne, chips and property development
The buildings I like most are those that instantly leave you in awe, that say something about the world they are part of. As a kid, I used to see Nottingham’s domed Council House as a symbol of civic grandeur, and stepping on to the platform at St Pancras inspires a similar feeling.
Particularly so yesterday, as a part of the station’s landmark hotel was turned into a suburb of Nottingham for the evening. The Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s London event attracted an audience of approaching 200 people, many of them connected to the city’s development industry, some outsiders who had been invited to hear what we have to offer.
I spent the evening chasing people whose badges didn’t have the red dots which picked them out as club members or Nottinghamians of one sort or another. Why? Well, the can-do approach of Club members was great to see but it’s the impact this has on those outsiders that determines whether they will do what the club’s name suggests.
The responses I got will be explored in some detail in next Tuesday’s Business Post, but they were broadly mixed – not in a negative sense, but in that they thought Nottingham was absolutely right to chase investment but could not buck a universally tough market. Impressed as they were by some very slick presentations of large-scale development, they wanted to know that in a difficult climate Nottingham’s planners would do everything possible to make sure that red tape did not make an already tough process frustratingly slow or expensively pointless.
At the moment, development money is heavily biased towards London and the South East, where a stronger economy is delivering more obvious opportunities for investors and financiers who remain risk-averse. So anything which makes it more difficult to operate in the provinces won’t help change that.
Nottingham’s new director of corporate development, David Bishop, was in the audience rather than on the podium, though he spent a lot of time quietly chatting to people. But his voice and his department’s approach to planning and development will need to be heard soon.
In the meantime all praise for St Pancras, a fabulous building whether you are arriving from Nottingham or Paris. I can certainly recommend the Champagne bar, where a fine non-vintage went down remarkably well with a bowl of chips.
So well they should just call it The Nottingham Special on the menu.
Particularly so yesterday, as a part of the station’s landmark hotel was turned into a suburb of Nottingham for the evening. The Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s London event attracted an audience of approaching 200 people, many of them connected to the city’s development industry, some outsiders who had been invited to hear what we have to offer.
I spent the evening chasing people whose badges didn’t have the red dots which picked them out as club members or Nottinghamians of one sort or another. Why? Well, the can-do approach of Club members was great to see but it’s the impact this has on those outsiders that determines whether they will do what the club’s name suggests.
The responses I got will be explored in some detail in next Tuesday’s Business Post, but they were broadly mixed – not in a negative sense, but in that they thought Nottingham was absolutely right to chase investment but could not buck a universally tough market. Impressed as they were by some very slick presentations of large-scale development, they wanted to know that in a difficult climate Nottingham’s planners would do everything possible to make sure that red tape did not make an already tough process frustratingly slow or expensively pointless.
At the moment, development money is heavily biased towards London and the South East, where a stronger economy is delivering more obvious opportunities for investors and financiers who remain risk-averse. So anything which makes it more difficult to operate in the provinces won’t help change that.
Nottingham’s new director of corporate development, David Bishop, was in the audience rather than on the podium, though he spent a lot of time quietly chatting to people. But his voice and his department’s approach to planning and development will need to be heard soon.
In the meantime all praise for St Pancras, a fabulous building whether you are arriving from Nottingham or Paris. I can certainly recommend the Champagne bar, where a fine non-vintage went down remarkably well with a bowl of chips.
So well they should just call it The Nottingham Special on the menu.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Anyone for tennis?
There’s been a suggestion today that when Wimbledon gets underway next week, you should let your staff take time out to watch it in the office.
Why? Well, the theory is that they’ll cadge a view of Andy Murray making a meal of things anyway, sneaking a peak on the interweb or turning in via the office TV if you’ve got one.
So, rather than come over all Montgomery Burns and bark ‘Get back to work!’ at them, you should let them chill, take time out and benefit from an exercise which will, it’s said, improve morale and encourage team-building. Hmm.
Now, the idea has been floated by two not-altogether-disinterested parties. One is TV Licensing and the other the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. They have done a survey of 700 employers on this very subject.
But while CIPD researcher Dr Jill Miller says that when employers act flexibly employees are more likely to go the extra mile, the vast majority of the firms who responded to the survey made abundantly clear they are not inclined to set up deckchairs and serve lime cordials in front of the flatscreen. Which didn’t really surprise me.
I’ll lave the last word to Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC: "Rather than impose a blanket ban on tennis, and run the risk of de-motivating staff and losing hours through unauthorised sick days, we would encourage employers to let people watch the games at work or at home if they like – and claim back their time afterwards. That way, everyone wins."
Over to you...
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