What a week for Nottingham

What a week for Nottingham. £500m and 5,000 jobs from the massive expansion of Broadmarsh, £240m and 2,000 jobs from the extension of the Victoria Centre, final sign-off from government for the construction of lines two and three of the tram…and now an Enterprise Zone at Lenton which could create anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs.
Normally, you’d be lucky if you got one scheme a year of this magnitude. To have four in the space of one week is well into all our Christmases coming at the same time.
These are only plans, of course. In this kind of economic climate – one clearly exposed to the impact of global economic events we cannot control – they could change, stall, perhaps be pushed on to the back-burner.
The likelihood is that at least three of them will go-ahead. Together, they could have a significant impact on the Nottingham economy for years to come, adding economic multipliers to local business and the local economy during and after construction.
It’s been obvious for a while that the unused parts of the sprawling Boots site were in pole position to become an Enterprise Zone – especially after the Treasury contacted Nottingham City Council and asked them to put more work into a draft proposal for it.
It was finally confirmed this morning by that well-known political double-act, David Cameron and Nick Clegg (who, incidentally, took over an announcement which was originally scheduled to be delivered by Vince Cable).
Alongside Boots and just across the road from QMC and the university hospital, and the international research giant that is University of Nottingham, it ticks all the boxes the government is looking for with the new generation Enterprise Zones.
The hope is that it could attract national and international businesses of size or standing, probably in technology or knowledge-related industries – while also being a great opportunity to nurture promising spin-outs from university research.
We’re told there is the potential for around 200,000 square metres of commercial business space for all sorts of industry sectors. So together with the 7,000-odd people who work at Boots, that could put up to 17,000 people working at the campus in the coming years.
Which begs one final question. While the expansion of the tram will assist with transport, this surely puts further pressure on government to make the dualling of the A453 a priority.
May be I’m expecting too much…

EZ does it: What our Enterprise Zone will offer

I blogged earlier this week about the Government’s plans to re-introduce Enterprise Zones to encourage business growth.
Sure enough, George Osborne announced in his Budget yesterday that there would be 21 of them across the country, with the first 10 including a site in the area covered by the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
I’d just love to tell you where it is right now, but some Very Important People are going to announce it later today and I’ve been told to keep my trap shut so they can claim all the glory.
All I’ll say is that the announcement will be of keen interest to businesses around Nottingham, and the location reflects one of the city’s industrial strengths.
What I can tell you, because the details are already out there on p33 of the Treasury’s Plan For Growth, is what the Enterprise Zone will offer:
RATES: A 100% Business Rate discount worth up to £275,000 over a five-year period for businesses moving into an EZ during this Parliament.
REINVESTMENT: All Business Rate growth in the zone for up to 25 years will be retained and shared between the local authorities in the Local Enterprise Partnership area ‘to support LEP economic priorities and ensure the returns from the EZ growth are reinvested locally’.
PLANNING: Government and local authorities to develop ‘radically simplified’ planning approaches for the EZ.
CONNECTIVITY: Government support to roll out superfast broadband throughout the EZ.
There is more. Alongside these basic rules, the government says it wants to see reduced regulations all round in the EZ, enhanced capital allowances for plant and machinery in areas where there is a manufacturing bias, the use of Tax Increment Finance, and UKTI support for inward investment into these zones or trade opportunities.
More detail will emerge later today, but these zones look likely to provide a stream of cash which Local Enterprise Partnerships had been missing. Government says it wants this money will be used to promote long-term sustainability.
So it clearly has the criticisms of the old Enterprise Zones flagged up earlier this week high in its mind.
Look out for the announcement later.

A late night with George Osborne

Some people sit back and neck decent bottle of plonk. Others watch Waterloo Road (poor souls). I launched into a 130-page document called the The Plan for Growth, produced by those nice people at HM Treasury and the Department for Business, Skills & Innovation.
More fool, me some will say. But since the alternative was the 2011 Budget Red Book, I don’t think I’ve done too badly as far as sticking matchsticks in my eyes goes.
Anyway, enough of the ritual self-pity. The Plan For Growth is one half of yesterday’s Budget, and it offers at least some of the detail which George Osborne’s headline-grabbing Budget Statement didn’t. There are some big, important measures in it, some eye-catching detail, plenty of ifs, buts and maybes. A lot of it matters to anyone who’s in business. I’ll blog separately about Enterprise Zones. So here goes, in no particular order, the rest of it:
PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT: Some public sector land is going to be auctioned off. The Homes & Communities Agency will announce the first tranche shortly, and it’s considering a ‘Build Now, Pay Later’ model in some cases.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS: A plan to extend the Right to Request Time Off for Training to firms with fewer than 250 staff is being scrapped
The Right to Request Flexible Working for parents with children under 17 is being scrapped
PUBLIC SECTOR CONTRACTS: Pre Qualification Questionnaires for firms who want to tender for public sector contracts are being scrapped for work worth less than £100,000.
The Government wants 25% of public sector contracts to go to SMEs (firms with a sub-£25m turnover).
Government also wants to cut the cost of public sector construction and infrastructure by 20% partly through standardised design and new procurement models.
BUSINESS GROWTH INVESTMENT: A Business Angel Co-Investment Fund is going to be set up, probably based around the existing Regional Growth Fund structure, pitched at backing early-stage SMEs with high growth potential. A Business Coaching for Growth service is also going out to tender, offering investment readiness training. One for those GINEM types?
INWARD INVESTMENT: UK Trade & Investment, the government’s international trade agency, will become ‘more entrepreneurial’ by using private sector expertise
There will be a ‘bespoke service’ for key inward investors giving them direct access to ministers and ‘speedy resolution of bureaucratic obstacles to investment’. New help will be given to help small firms trade internationally.
LIFE SCIENCES/SOCIAL CARE: A new Health Research Regulatory Agency will look at streamlining the regulations and cost-effectiveness of clinical trials. It will also strip out regulations ‘never meant for the social care market’ which prevent market entry and flexible services.
CONSTRUCTION: A two-year rolling programme of funding-approved public sector projects will be published to help the construction industry
TOURISM: A £100m campaign, co-funded by the industry, aims to attract 4m more visitors to the UK after 2012. Tourist boards will become smaller, industry-led partnerships with government.
There will be more, and when the Chancellor said his Budget as ‘fiscally neutral’ he was telling you from the start that he’ll take back anything he’s giving away. That's one for the Red Book.

Finally Broadmarsh: The £500 million game-changer

I was sitting in the office early last week looking over some sprawling indicative drawings for the wholesale rebuilding of a massive part of Nottingham. And it’s a big deal.

The drawings sketch out the detail of a £500 million retail scheme ranged across three levels which could not only put Nottingham beyond the reach of its regional rivals, but also rid the city of the out-dated eyesore that is its southern approach.

So what was my reaction? One of deja vu.

The story of the redevelopment of Broadmarsh is a modern-day parable about the relationships between big cities and big developers and shopping centres and the economy.

I first saw photos, drawings and CGIs of the redevelopment of Broadmarsh in the early noughties. Even then, redevelopment was long overdue, with the centre which defines the boundary between the city centre and its southern approach looking every inch the 1960s Arndale dinosaur it really is.

As time went by, the amount Westfield said they were going to spend on the redevelopment slowly rose. But so did the sense that it wasn’t their top priority. Nottingham City Council bent over backwards to try to make sure it remained a priority. Indeed, some critics would point to the strange decision to rid Lister Gate of what looked like perfectly healthy trees. Chopping them down opened up a nice sightline to a re-clad Broadmarsh entrance, but was there really anything wrong with the trees? We’ll never know.

What we do know is that while Nottingham City Council tried to keep what had become a £700m scheme alive, Westfield promptly went and spent a load of money in Derby.

The Australian developer has a long-established reputation for taking a robust attitude to business, but this decision went down very badly in Nottingham – on two fronts.

With the arrival in the City Council’s planning department of Jennifer Dearing, an experienced outside consultant brought in to give some backbone to a drifting planning department, Nottingham’s attitude to Westfield hardened.

More than once, I heard senior figures in the city say that if all Westfield had to offer was a bigger version of the curtain-walled giant they built in Derby, then Nottingham was no longer interested.

It didn’t stop there. The city took the advice of some senior national figures in architecture and urban development and decided that, whatever happened, the plans Westfield had sketched out to the council all those years ago were dead. Whether it was Westfield or someone else, a new approach was needed – one which would use large-scale retail redevelopment to solve an ageing blot on the landscape.

The credit crunch effectively killed off Westfield’s original plan. No one was going to throw £700m at a large scale shopping development when retailers were being deserted by consumers suffering from badly-bruised credit cards.

But none of this changed the fact that Nottingham is Britain’s fifth biggest shopping city and the centre of the East Midlands’ catchment. It may have bled some people to Leicester (which now has a John Lewis as well), but Derby hasn’t got the high-end retail brands to challenge. Neither is as big.

So now, finally, we have a new plan - all £500 million and 5,000 jobs worth of it.

Going back to my initial point, I have to admit that I haven’t seen it all before in the design sense. The drawings I pored over last week show a scheme that has changed drastically. Instead of a monstrous, old-fashioned mall, Westfield has now agreed to produce a series of smaller buildings which will open up new street scenes, and rid one of England’s eight most important cities of a Berlin Wall of a centre which shouts regional mediocrity at anyone walking in from the railway station.

It could lead to Nottingham getting something genuinely different – a new generation of shopping centre which doesn’t stand out like some monstrous blob. One with streets to wander through and an open air atmosphere, one with views of the city it is part of.

So it’s wrong to be churlish about this plan. If it proceeds the way Westfield are suggesting then it could change the face of the city for the better while bringing in 5,000 jobs.

The knock-on impact of its construction will be considerable: a project of this scale will have an economic multiplier during and after construction through the jobs it creates and the money spent during building and the likelihood that – if it brings in new names – it will bring in new visitors.

Those new names should, finally, include Harvey Nichols, with whom Westfield has an informal agreement.

It may also add to the logic behind investment in redevelopment of the railway station and expansion of the tram

In short, a project of this size has the potential to give the city’s economy a noticeable tick-up.
A scheme on this scale does not come without its question marks. What will happen to other parts of the city’s retail core when Broadmarsh opens? And what impact will it have on the Victoria Centre (which has expansion plans of its own)? How will we cope with radical revisions to the city’s road network implied by this plan?
The biggest question of all is the oldest question of all. After all these years, is Westfield finally going to come good on its promise?

An Enterprising dilemma for Nottingham

Back in the mid 90s I was working as a business journalist in Leeds. It was an exciting time to be there – the economy was motoring, owner-managed firms were thriving and the city had taken on a real professional gloss thanks to the drive of the Leeds Financial Services Initiative.
It wasn’t just the deal-making accountants and lawyers who saw West Yorkshire as a lucrative hunting ground, though. One morning I picked up the Yorkshire Post to find a great exclusive: its reporters had ambushed officials from the Welsh Development Agency, who were camped out at a hotel just outside the city inviting local businesses to consider leaving Yorkshire and moving to Wales.
The WDA was, quite rightly, sent packing with a flea in its ear and politicians demanding to know why public money was being used to poach businesses from one part of the UK to another when the jobs ‘created’ in Wales would simply be those lost in Yorkshire.
The answer goes to the heart of the recent debate about whether we should bring back Enterprise Zones, and we’ll find out later this week if Nottingham has been successful in getting one on our patch.
I was chatting to Graham Chapman, the deputy leader of Nottingham City Council, about this very issue on Friday. He gave a broad hint that there are a couple of sites where they’d like to give it a go, but made it clear that the terms of the Enterprise Zone were the key: it would work only if the incentives were framed in such a way that they didn’t attract businesses who were moving only to follow the money.
As the WDA fiasco illustrated, he has point. There was another example closer to home which also threw a harsh light on the inherent weakness in inward investment underpinned by financial incentives.
Back in the early 90s, Mansfield was coming to terms with the social and economic impact of the end of the mining industry. It got a sniff that an American car components company, Johnson Controls, was interested in opening a factory making car seat covers. There were 600 jobs on offer and, quite understandably, the district council pushed the boat out for them, with an incentive package which included a contribution of nearly £2m from the European Union.
Six years later the council’s economic development chief turned up to a meeting with Johnson Control executives at which they handed over a sheet comparing the costs of operating in Mansfield and the costs of operating in the Czech Republic.
Mansfield had no answer. This was a global business, with no particular links to Nottinghamshire, which had decided elsewhere that it was going to follow the lowest cost option. So off it went, taking 600 jobs with it.
Graham Chapman, who knows a lot about economic development, says that Enterprise Zones will work only if they encourage a sustainable commitment to a location – in other words, one driven by business and economic logic rather than a short-term sweetener.
Enterprise Zones can work – the Sherwood Business Park [pictured above] just off Junction 27 of the M1 is a living, breathing example of one based on an attractive site right next to a motorway junction. So its advantages went beyond financial incentives.
But they also raise questions about fair competition in business and commercial property: why would it be right for one site to have Government support and not another?
We’ll find out how – or if – George Osborne has worked out some convincing answers to these big questions later this week.

The law of unintended consequences

Another of the issues swirling around those controversial public sector cuts is the suggestion that women are being unfairly targeted, an implication which surfaced in some of the coverage surrounding International Women’s Day
Without passing judgement in any way on either gender politics or financial policy, I can say with some certainty that this isn’t true.
How come? It is probably true that more women than men will lose their jobs as a result of public sector cutbacks. But this is because there are more of them in the public sector – particularly in teaching, the NHS and those roles which are part-time or negotiated job share.
So while it is accurate to say that more women are likely to lose jobs as a result of public sector cutbacks than men, it is NOT accurate to say women are more likely to lose their jobs than men. There is a huge difference between those apparently similar statements
Taking into account the proportions of female and male workers, they are in fact at equal risk. Only if you tipped the scales in favour of women employees – in other words, put blokes up for the chop first – would the numbers start to level out.
Unless there is a hidden policy which says councils and health services should sack women first (which would be both illegal and politically stupid) then women are not being targeted.
So, everything’s fair and even, then? Well, not exactly. There is another side to this issue, one which those engaged in the unfairness campaign would do well to examine.
There is a clear risk that the loss of jobs in the public sector will cause particular problems for women – and, indeed, for families and the private sector.
The public sector has led the way in adopting family-friendly working practices, allowing the use of flexible working, job share and other arrangements to enable women – and men - to balance the demands of home and family life while still being able to earn money or pursue a career. It isn’t unusual to find couples where one works in the private sector and one works in the public sector. That mix allows them to balance work with childcare and other family pressures.
Those women in the public sector who do lose their jobs may find it harder to secure employment in the private sector which offers the same level of family-friendly working conditions – or the same level of acceptance.
In that sense, the loss of jobs which allow parents to meet these conflicting demands could pose problems for all of us.
One final thought. Unions are probably right to be sensitive to unfairness towards women, since there are still assumptions in some of the more traditional quarters that it’s not so bad when a woman loses out on the basis that she may not be the main breadwinner.
However, these same unions must have been on autopilot when they pushed through the now notorious Job Evaluation process in the public sector. It may well have had exactly that effect.
This process, which has been ticking away like a timebomb for years, was basically an attempt to raise the pay levels of council staff at the bottom rung of the ladder by comparing the content of their jobs to that of other posts with higher scale points.
It was a laudable idea. But there was no new money to fund the sometimes significant, back-dated pay increases this process led to. And the process went down as well as up, concluding that while some staff apparently deserved more others should now be paid less.
It has been an inexorable and robotic exercise whose subjective complexities almost guaranteed inconsistencies and injustices.
So the significant pay rises enjoyed by some council workers have coincided with significant pay cuts among colleagues. Critics have said this is far from coincidental, and that an unfunded process launched in the interests of fairness and equality has simply shifted the problem from one set of pay scales to another.
Job Evaluation started out with the best of intentions. Yet some of its consequences have been distressing and grotesque. And many of its victims are women.

The global impact of a terrible disaster

Most of us can remember where we were when the planes struck the World Trade Center.
I have a suspicion that the scale of the human and economic damage done by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami means that it will take on a similar significance as one of the defining events of the early 21 st century.
Right, now, all the focus is rightly on the appalling human suffering apparent in numbing images of wholesale destruction across Japan’s north east coast.
But sooner or later – I suspect sooner in this always-on connected world – the focus will shift on to the social, economic and technological implications of an irresistible natural disaster.
We will notice the economic impact here fairly shortly. With Toyota, Nissan and Honda having shut car plants and electronics manufacturers like Sony also halting production it may well be that the supply of these goods in the UK and the rest of the world at least falters for a while. That has implications for dealers and retailers.
There could also be implications for overseas production if any of their chains of suppliers export certain components to satellite production facilities in places like the UK.
UK firms who do business with Japan may also find contract decisions get delayed for sometime as their Japanese customers try to assess the impact of the tsunami on their own economy and resources.
On the resource front, it may well be that the prices of some raw materials falls in the short term as a major consumer like Japan suffers a temporary loss in production capacity.
In the long term, those resources look likely to rise again as Japan’s resource consumption will climb heavily when it begins the process of reconstruction.
The nuclear industry will face new questions and new engineering challenges as it absorbs the lessons of what has happened to the plants at Fukushima Daiichi.
Geologists, civil engineers and planners will assess the best ways to construct communities exposed to the terrible power of earthquakes and tsunamis – and to warn them of impending disaster.
The very fact that the Japanese disaster was on our screens within hours of it happening means it is not a localised problem far away.
Its implications look likely to be felt for years to come.

• If you want to make a donation to the relief efforts being mounted by the Red Cross, click HERE

Nottingham's planning chief saga reaches a conclusion

It’s been a stuttering, painfully long-winded process, but Nottingham City Council finally appears to have a new strategic director of city development.
He is ex-civil engineer David Bishop, who currently carries out a similar role for Bristol City Council
I say appears, because it looked like Simon Smales was going to step into the shoes which had been vacated by Barry Horne more than a year ago. For reasons which aren’t clear, the deal fell over at the last minute.
Mr Bishop will come to Nottingham in May, taking over from the widely-respected interim planning chief Jennifer Dearing, who has fought Nottingham’s corner with Westfield during tough negotiations about the future of Broadmarsh while overseeing the painful restructuring of a troubled department.
This process has led to yet more uncertainty in property and development about the future direction of a department which had only limited respect in the industry.
So one of Mr Bishop’s first challenges will be building bridges, reassuring the industry that Nottingham takes them and their plans seriously – and will deliver the level of service implied by the recently and controversially introduced planning advice charges.
His CV suggests a familiarity with many of the transport and sustainability issues which preoccupy Nottingham, and Bristol is a city of a size which compares with our own turf.
Welcome to Nottingham, David, here’s hoping…

A legal car crash?

Tim Garratt has catalogued more than once the ‘computer says no’ nightmare of dealing with car insurance companies.

This wearying process may become even more robotic and infuriating thanks to a European Court of Justice decision which I suspect many of you are already familiar with.

Contrary to what some reports suggested, the ECJ didn’t suddenly decide the start meddling in car insurance premiums. It decided that EU member states could no longer delay implementing a 2004 directive which said sex discrimination in the delivery of financial services shouldn’t be allowed.
Fair enough, you’d think. But it means that the standard UK insurance industry practice of charging men more for cover than women is unfairly discriminatory – that gender alone cannot be a basis for different premiums.
At first glance, the majestic simplicity of the ECJ decision flies in the face of three basic concepts in life – risk, common sense and statistics.
Putting a price on risk is one of the key concepts of economics, and it is the reason why insurance exists: setting aside sums of money which will cover damage or loss.
Logically, the price you pay for risk should reflect the level of risk that you take. It’s a beautifully simple and easily understandable concept. And when it goes wrong, we all take a hit – which is just what has happened in the wake of the credit crunch.
One of the key reasons why it is now significantly harder to gain credit is that it is now being priced at levels which reflect the risks of the lending itself and the economic circumstances against which that risk is being taken. Rather than a chase for market share in lending.
Common sense says that a one-size-fits-all approach to anything is likely to end up being unrealistic and inflexible. Dangerously so when you apply it to the concept of risk analysis.

Statistics are the real killer in this case (almost literally, I’m sorry to say). Countless analyses and research studies have shown that men (particularly young men) ARE more likely to be involved in accidents than women.

In other words, the ECJ’s judgement could be seen as a denial of statistical reality.

However…I’m not sure it’s that straightforward. If insurance firms do base their premiums on the simple difference in accident rates between men and women then they are actually making a conveniently crude judgement.

All sorts of factors play a part in the risks people take in life – social, financial, psychological, chronological and, yes, sexual. But it isn’t gender alone which determines that blokes have a greater turbo nutter bastard tendency than women.

If insurance firms crank up premiums in response to this decision then they will be guilty of a convenient cop-out, one which the EU – which kicked this whole process off – will have a duty to look into.

If, however, the industry now decides to apply a little more science to the way it calculates premiums then we could end up with a more accurate price being put on the risks individual car drivers take, whatever their sex.

Don’t hold your breath, though.

127 Hours of shopping

I have Claire Bicknell to thank for this latest analysis of the way retailers hook different generations (for which read ‘grumpy old man’s rant against the dying of the light’)

There we were, sitting have a nice coffee in Carluccio’s and talking over Smith Cooper’s plans for world domination (well, a move into the Lace Market anyway) when she reminded me of a Tweet I made after a demoralising experience in Primark. That’s all it took for me to go off on one.

I felt cornered in Primark because I literally couldn’t see the wood for the trees. While my daughters sifted through what seemed to me like a forest of tat-inspired jewellery, I stood there, waffled on about why cheap jewellery is still poor value when it doesn’t last five minutes, and then realised I was completely disorientated. I wanted to dive for the exit, but couldn’t see a way out of the jewellery section.

It reminded me of that scene in the late, lamented Father Ted, where a bunch of Roman Catholic priests get lost in the lingerie section in an Irish department store. Only it wasn’t that furtively interesting.

I did escape eventually, but it was further evidence that blokes of my age (that’s ahem-and-a-bit, since you’re asking), become a tragic cross between a wallet and a spare part when they go shopping with the family.

Now, a part of that is because my idea of ‘shopping’ involves coffee and a book in Waterstones and, er, that’s it. If I’m really feeling sociable I might take in the home technology (read ‘boys’ toys’) department in John Lewis or the wines section pretty much anywhere. But it’s also because I can’t believe the routine lack of anything resembling great service which lies underneath these margins.

Fashion is where I stand and issue a series of utterly futile observations about these retail margins while my daughters smile, nod and just get on with assembling a stylish combo that would never occur to a sartorial car-crash like me.

But it is MY wallet which these combos depend on. This is why I would rather stand in for that bloke in 127 Hours than get dragged into the likes of Jack Wills. Now, any sane person would imagine that if a girl wants a gilet you can get one for a few quid in Decathlon. It’ll have the street cred of horsey overtones, so what’s the problem? The problem is that it hasn’t got Jack Wills plastered all over it, and this massive enhancement to its technical capabilities means that instead of a couple of tenners you can hand over 98 of your English pounds for the privilege of advertising someone else’s brand.

The thing is, as insane as it sounds it is also inevitable.

On some days of the week I drop my eldest daughter off at school and you have only to look at the bags and accessories she and her mates attack the campus with to know that Brand Is Everything. Jack Wills is still well up there, but the rising stars are the likes of Hollister and (if you can get your hands on it) Abercrombie and Fitch. You might occasionally see some Boden or Joules, but that’s clearly stuff your mum bought for you. The horror of it!
Fashion accessories are not just things you wear, either. They are things you text from and listen to. So you’ve got an iPhone? Well, OK, but is it an iPhone 4? The only vaguely credible alternative is a Blackberry. That’s right – a Blackberry. In school. They should read John Lyle’s life without an iPhone.
I probably need to go and have another coffee. Only problem is that if it’s the weekend I’ll probably bump into my daughter’s generation sipping some over-priced smoothie.
So I am going back into my darkened room instead.