Tony’s taken up running. Again.
This vainglorious little page records my personal triumphs and disasters as I plod around the dark wet streets and over the windswept moors to try to get back into shape.
Promoting cities 60’s style
In the days before YouTube a short promotional video was produced by Sheffield Council. As you would expect, it’s upbeat, it provides a few flashbacks into how we saw ourselves back then, AND it has Carry On music!
Even in 1969 it seemed obvious that steel was important but a diminishing part of what the city was all about, and we learn leisure and tourism aren’t new ideas to try to make a city more vibrant. No modern video would seriously reference bubonic plague, but Peter Wigley, Sheffield Council’s first PR and marketing man did just that to sell the city. How successful it was is a matter of opinion, but when it was produced in 1969 the corporation seemed keen to jam in as many messages as possible, even if some of them were a little bit odd and misplaced.
Childhood memories of the Sheffield Christmas illuminations always seemed better, but checking the video seems to confirm that there were more of them. The Sheffield Show in Hillsborough Park is now just a distant memory as is the Star Walk, and it’s almost laughable to see the M1 motorway and Sheffield Parkway devoid of traffic.
Sheffield University’s target of having 10,000 students in Sheffield by the 1980’s is in stark contrast to the current Sheffield student population of over 60,000. Slum clearances were a big deal in the 60’s and the now maligned architecture of Park Hill, Hyde Park and Norfolk Park take centre stage with references to how they provided modern homes for ordinary people.
It’s interesting to see familiar messages being references with the the Park Hill redux now being undertaken By Urban Splash. It reminds us that regeneration isn’t just a thing that happens once – it’s an ongoing activity that never really starts, and can never really end.
Time stops for no-one, and even though the PR style has changed over the years, the pride in what’s being done, and the level of ambition for the future remain undiminished in this amazing and versatile city.
Court agrees that small sites are exempt from Section 106 payments
Self builders are set to save £1,000s thanks to a recent decision on Section 106 Planning Obligations. On 11 May the Court of Appeal Civil Division reversed last year’s High Court decision to quash the exemption from s106 planning obligation payments for small sites.
The exemption, first introduced by Minister for Housing and Planning, Brandon Lewis MP, by Ministerial Statement on 28 November 2014, freed self builders from the unpopular s106 planning obligation payments which required them to divert £10,000s from their budget for a new home, into a payment towards roads, schools, affordable housing and other local authority infrastructure projects.
NaCSBA, the National Custom and Self Build Association, campaigned for the exemption on the grounds that the payments – designed to mitigate the impact of major development on local infrastructure – were disproportionate to the impact of small developments, especially single self build homes and failed to recognize the exceptional costs of developing a small site.
The exemption, applied to sites in England of 10 new homes or less (five in designated rural areas), was welcomed by self builders and small housebuilders alike. Some local authorities, however, disagreed with the exemption and on 31 July 2015, the judge in a High Court case brought by two neighbouring authorities, Reading and West Berkshire, found the exemption unlawful, and it was quashed just eight months after its introduction leaving many self builders in indefinite limbo.
The High Court Judge’s ruling clearly contradicted the intentions of the Government and its stated commitment to boost housebuilding, help smaller local housebuilders and double the size of the self build sector to 20,000 homes a year by 2020. NaCSBA immediately launched a campaign for the reintroduction of the exemption and in August 2015, DCLG was granted leave to appeal. The High Court’s decision to quash the exemption has been reversed with immediate effect. The Government is expected to update its guidance accordingly.
“NaCSBA welcomes the Court of Appeal ruling,” says Chair, Michael Holmes. “This exemption, together with the existing exemption from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), brings us one step closer to NaCBSA’s stated aim to make a high quality, sustainable, affordable individual home an option for the many and not just the few.
“Despite this victory for those who want to build their own home, it is still possible that the original appellants may seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.”
Sheffield’s office market shows value with growth potential
The latest Knight Frank regional office market review is reporting that 2016 was a relatively quiet year for the local office market in terms of occupier take up. 63 deals completed compared to 84 in 2015 with a total of 201,500 sq ft being occupied, 36% below the 10-year average. Deals included 9,500 sq ft letting to leisure and gaming company Rank Group at Navigation House in a relocation from London and 7,840 sq ft letting to Zoo Digital at City Gate. Headline rents stagnated at £23.00 / sq ft but hopes are high that this will push out to £24.00 / sq ft in 2017.
On the office real estate investment front the picture looks better with a substantial increase in deals being completed. Around £85m of key deals with prime yields at around 6.5% went through in 2016.
Vulcan House occupied by the Home Office at the J2 Riverside Exchange was bought by Spanish investor Trinova Real Estate for £30.9m with initial yield of 6.78%. The 75,600 sq ft Riverside East office let to Irwin Mitchell util 2017 was sold for £23.4m to 90 North Real Estate on behalf of Arzan Wealth and Sidra Capital,indicating a net initial yield of 6.73%. Pramerica Real Estate Investors bought Derwent House for £8.7m on behalf of the The John Lewis Pension Fund.
Perhaps unsurprisingly in a global market over two thirds of these purchases were by overseas investors. Although the volume is small compared to centres like Leeds and Manchester it does show that Sheffield can offer value on the world stage with quality real estate deals and considering that yields were at 5.00% in 2007 there is plenty of room for growth in the coming years.
Vertical farming may be coming to our cities
Vertical farming may be coming to our cities
Living in a nation with a supermarket on seemingly every city street corners we’re prone to forgetting the cost of bringing fresh food to the market. Improved logistics has enabled us to bring fresh edible for from the four corners of the planet.
It might have started with bananas ripening on boats travelling from the West Indies but there’s no stopping crates of kumquats heading from Asian farms to the most humdrum village shops via a complex network of trucks, chilled warehouses, railways, aeroplanes and ships. That all costs money and importantly, non renewable resources.
A new breed of farmer is appearing that is determined to reduce the miles travelled from farm to table. Using hydroponic growing systems which grow almost anything without soil they are finding ways to utilise the vertical instead of the horizontal. These new farms need a fraction of the land to produce their produce, and have enabled the industrialisation of food growing in a way that does away with traditional farming.
At the moment these farms are in the early stages and aren’t on the commercial scale that would make them viable alternatives, but as the methods mature they could become a common sight on the face of new buildings.
Sheffield’s Chief Executive on the housing crisis
Sheffield’s Chief Executive, John Mothersole gives an excellent and realistic outline of the challenges facing cities as the supply of housing land shrinks, forcing down new-build completions and pushing up prices for buyers and tenants alike.
This will be a difficult issue to move forward with the inherent conflict between the need to build and the natural tendency we all have towards NIMBYism on our doorstep. Politics (or at least the need for politicians to keep voters voting for them) constantly gets in the way and while we all understand that our young people are finding it harder than ever to set up home, we don’t like the impact that means to our neighbourhood if it’s one that will see new homes.
Planning policy needs reform, but in the meantime we’ll need a shift towards reordering sectors of cities so that zones reflect the local needs today rather than the historic grain. We tend to stay within our comfort zones, only thinking of what an area is or has been, whereas we have got to remove the familiarity from the decision making process to see what somewhere can be soon.
That’s not a clear nod towards for brownfield development, since without the extensive and unpopular use of compulsory purchase powers the difficulties of site assembly will prolong matters by decades. Whilst initially attractive as a soundbite, brownfield development brings lots of problems, both technical and social, and most brownfield sites have a direct impact on more people than even a rural development does.
Alternatively, selective greenfield consents which complement adjacent brownfield sites can bring together usefully sized development plots that can deliver new homes over the next two to five years. These sites exist both on the edges of town and in the very heart of the urban grain, but it takes market expertise and a canny eye to see the potential that extends beyond an easily identifiable site. Council planners don’t tend to be very good at this due to the many constraints that they have to work under, but there are others out there who are expert at knitting together these schemes and they need an open mind and support from Town Halls.
With shortfall of hundreds of thousands of homes per year being built we really can’t afford to wait until community sensibility catches up. It’s impossible to pickle a community in a moment in time (and it’s a fallacy to imagine that even the prettiest village has existed forever) so the load needs to be shared. In doing so, it’s vital that people are involved and engaged in the process so that they clearly understand the issues and can be a part of the decision making process.
Multi-agency approach is vital so long as the overseers (especially planning committees) take on an enabling function rather than their traditional and control blocking functions. If we can achieve that we can provide decent and affordable homes for everyone.
A view into Sheffield from outside
It’s always wise to listen to outsiders opinion of a city. They have an insight that only detachment can bring,
Of course that doesn’t mean to say that they are always correct in everything that they say, but it’s important to understand external perceptions so that we can better plan for successful change and development (AKA regeneration) from within.
A recent article from Steve Parnell in the RIBA Journal expressed his views from a perspective that must have come from time spent in Sheffield. His references are immaculate, his sources are impeccable.
His conclusion is bleak and yet heartwarming, with a dollop of wisdom that a city like Sheffield can ill-afford to ignore at the moment.
(and if that doesn’t work for you, try The Road To Wigan Pier for a reminder that nothing changes)
Northern soul
It’s escaped pin-striped bling – now paradoxical Sheffield must grab its chances
Sheffield is a much loved city. It’s hard to know why, really. On the face of it, it’s pretty down at heel. Achingly so, if you believe the cliché. If you have no connection with the so-called Steel City, it probably brings to mind Robert Carlyle and co dancing to Hot Chocolate in the mid 1990s. And Sheffield is often chosen by TV mockumentaries as the typical northern post-industrial hive of inequity.
These portraits aren’t false. But they are one-sided – Sheffield is often also voted the happiest place to live in the UK. And Hallam is one of the richest boroughs in the country with allegedly its highest concentration of professionals.
The real paradox is how Sheffield’s locals manage to maintain such pride in a city which is, on the surface, pretty crap.
HS2 will not stop at Sheffield, but at its retail hub, Meadowhall. Ah yes, the ‘M’ word. That shopping mecca developed by a scrap metal dealer on the site of Hadfield’s massive Hecla Works using one of Thatcher’s Enterprise Zone non-plan deals. Nothing symbolises the shift from industrial production to post-industrial consumption more.
They say Meadowhall killed Sheffield city centre, but the councillors have done a pretty good job on their own, ever keen to raze any building of note in order to create a tabula rasa for ‘regeneration’.
Last week’s Sheffield Telegraph sported on its front page an ‘artist’s impression’ of the future of the Castle Market site. The markets designed by Andrew Derbyshire in the 1950s have had heavenly praise laid upon them by that Holy Trinity of architectural criticism, Ian Nairn, Owen Hatherley and Jonathan Meades (I may have made up the last one, but I’m sure he’d love it as much as Cedric Price did). But the site looks like a bouncy castle aside a grassy knoll fit for mediaeval battle re-enactments. That rumbling sound is Nairn turning in his grave as Sheffield Council’s cabinet member for business, skills and development, Leigh Brammall, dances on it.
Or maybe it’s the bulldozers demolishing more of the city centre which looks something like a ghost town, most of its traders being given their compulsory purchase marching orders. Down the Moor (the central pedestrianised shopping area), shops are empty or demolished. Last July, after years of indecision, developer Hammersons finally pulled out of negotiations to develop the New Retail Quarter, a Liverpool One style state-of-the-art privatised shopping precinct enveloping the city centre. Sheffielders’ response was a typical shrugged ‘it’s not for the like of us any road up’.
Actually, it’s given Sheffield a stay of execution and what could have been a city with all the character of the pin-striped bling of Leeds, now has a chance to be half decent. So what are Sheffield architects doing about this?
Building Fantastical Cities – on the street. · Credit: Tony May
A recent initiative of the Sheffield Society of Architects invited local practices to join a day-long charrette investigating the opportunity that the New Retail Quarter hiatus afforded. Councillors like Simon Ogden (head of city regeneration), Isobel Bowler (cabinet member for culture, sport and leisure), and Maria Duffy (interim head of planning) were invited for an end of day crit to see the proposals and comment on it. We all know that architects can get a bit heady when given some blank sheets of paper, coloured crayons, and an urban problem. But sometimes that’s what’s needed. The key idea that the decision makers should have taken away was based on Marcus Westbury’s ideas from Newcastle, Australia. Westbury recently visited the university to talk bottom-up, independent, cultural, and creative regeneration – that you need to attract people into the centre and then they will spend money there. If Meadowhall is going to be the retail hub, then the historic centre could be a culturally charged civic centre. Without battle re-enactments.
Few cities do festivals better than Sheffield with its generous archipelago of public spaces. It hosts the DocFest (claimed as the Cannes for documentaries), Grin Up North (England’s largest comedy festival), and Tramlines (an independent urban music festival). At festival time, the city feels relaxed, generous, friendly, open, creative, pregnant. Julian Dobson of Sheffield based Urban Pollinators comments that Blairite language like ‘New Retail Quarter’ misses the huge opportunity that presents itself to Sheffield to define the first of a new model of city centres rather than the last of the old. A centre promoting cultural and civic engagement might be such a model.
Director of RIBA Yorkshire Emma England says the Sheffield chapter is the most active in the region, due to the two universities being involved, the city being so willing to engage in its activities, and a more design conscious community. The large Sheffield practices, BDP, HLM, HCD and Bond Bryan, are also very supportive of its activities, and smaller practices such as Norton Mayfield Architects, which works mainly in London but is based in Sheffield, is also proactive in its engagement. They co-organised and hosted the Fantastical Cities workshop for children, for example, as part of Sheffield Design Week, where the road was closed in front of their studio and kids invited to design a fantastical city from cardboard, gaffer tape, bubble wrap, and various other off-cuts.
But the micro-practices really excite me. Those like Studio Polpo, set up as a social enterprise to plough its profits back into benefiting the city, working with Architype on larger p
The 137 mile SkyCycle Floating Above London
Foster + Partners and Space Syntax – a team who share Lord Foster’s passion for the benefits of cycling – have jointly developed SkyCycle, a new approach to transform cycling in the capital. Following existing suburban railway corridors, a wide, secure deck would be constructed above the trains to create new cycle routes throughout London.
The proposed SkyCycle network follows existing suburban rail services and provides over 220 kilometres of safe, car free cycle routes which can be accessed at over 200 entrance points. Almost six million people live within the catchment area of the proposed network, half of whom live and work within 10 minutes of an entrance. Each route can accommodate 12,000 cyclists per hour and will improve journey times by up to 29 minutes.
The Mayor’s aim is for London to be the best major city in the world. However, the capital’s transport network is at capacity and faces the challenge of population growth of 12 percent over the next decade. The government has committed to investment in transport, through airport planning, high-speed rail, Thameslink and Crossrail. The Mayor’s transport strategy also seeks to address the needs of pedestrians and cyclists in the city’s crowded streets and in areas where the public realm is poor. The environmental and health benefits of cycling notwithstanding, the bicycle is a more efficient use of London’s limited space – we believe there is a pressing need for network modelling of new capacity for these active, self-determined modes of transport.
The SkyCycle approach is revolutionary, and has potential applications in cities around the world. Applying lateral thinking, Britain’s engineering expertise and investment in transport technology could lead to the creation of an efficient platform building system.
As London’s railway lines were originally built for steam trains, they follow contours that naturally reduce the amount of energy expended and avoid steep gradients. SkyCycle exploits this historic legacy. Associated benefits include the regeneration of the typically low value, often underutilised industrial sites next to railway lines; vertically layering the city to create new social spaces and amenities on these cycling high streets; and the integration of automated goods delivery networks.
Early studies of a SkyCycle system indicate that it provides capacity at a much lower cost than building new roads and tunnels. The possibility of the deck providing development opportunities for businesses along the route, particularly where it intersects with stations and bridges, has also been the subject of the study, exploring ideas for public/private commercial growth and regeneration. The SkyCycle study team will continue to further develop these scenarios, and the project has already been presented to the GLA, TfL and Network Rail, as well as to developers and contractors with specialist rail experience.
Does Vince Cable really want to put up interest rates?
Once again house prices are in the news, but this time it’s because the Business Secretary Vince Cable is talking about raising interest rates to help keep them under control.
Cable was speaking primarily about the overheating in the London and south-east housing market, introducing the spectre of London becoming a city populated by wealthy foreigners working in high-paying jobs.
Sadly this is another example of the London centric view that policy-making seems to be adopting increasingly at the moment. While it is true to say that London is attractive to many wealthy overseas buyers, the one thing that is self-evident is that house prices are not a problem to those people. Increasing interest rates will have the most on anyone apart from who is already struggling or in marginal position when it comes to their monthly mortgage repayments. Cash buyers and those with plenty to spend don’t inhabit this part of the market.
The other self-evident fact is that it is a problem of London and the south-east. The implications of the Bank of England raising interest rates go far beyond house prices for the rich and famous in London. The help to buy scheme introduced to assist in providing deposits for purchases up to £300,000 has been a runaway success and it’s now made victims of its success by inflating house prices across the country.
Straightforward supply and demand economics is what is driving as prices up. While our developers build less than half of the required number of houses the problem is not going to go away, no matter what happens to interest rates. Until planning and development policies relieve restrictions on building the new family homes that are in the greatest demand, the prices of those houses will continue to rise by more than the rate of inflation.
Vince cable may not want to put up house prices but there’s little point in espousing on interest rate ideas unless it’s on the table or it’s an elaborate precursor to some other measure. In the past he’s been a keen proponent of land and property taxes based purely on the value, in other words, carpetbagging. While this may seem a politically expedient and to some extent a populist move, it puts the needs of government receipts above the needs of business and industry to create wealth and reinvest in their product and customers. It will be the small customer (first-time buyers, young families, retirees) who pay for any government property value grab, which will do nothing to provide the quarter million new homes a year needed to prevent market busting house price rises.
Why our planning system is a perfect storm for a house price explosion
In September a House Builders Federation survey reported that the number of planning consents issued by local authority planning departments had risen by 49% year-on-year. The first six months of 2013 reported 77,686 residential permissions granted.
On the face of it these are encouraging numbers. It is undoubtedly good news for the building industry and the wider UK economy, but it also highlights the parlous state of the industry over the last few years.Back in 2007 the government calculated that around 240,000 new homes were required every year by 2016 to keep pace with the increasing new household being created in the United Kingdom. Environmentalist Jonathan Porrit though that it was more like 270,000.
The shocking reality is that even in 07/08 (which most agree was an unsustainable housing boom) only 207,370 new homes were started. Contrast that with the highs of the late 1960s when almost half a million houses a year were being built.
We are now faced with the triple challenge of ever-increasing numbers of households requiring homes, low housebuilding volume, and a National Planning Framework which local authorities find difficult to implement responsibly because of the pressures placed on them by communities and local politicians who don’t want greenfield development near them.
Even if the current huge rise in planning permissions is sustained, the UK can still expect a shortfall of at least 50% of the minimum need once the last few years doldrums are taken into account. There is no way that the past and current shortfalls can be made up any time soon so the natural laws of supply and demand will trump efforts to price control the marketplace.
An argument often put forward is that land owners land bank their sites so that it goes up in price so that they can make more profit. This doesn’t make any sense because land is a developers stock. It is the same as the Mars Bars in the newsagent’s store room – it has to be sold to make a profit, and house builders build houses to make their profit, just as newsagents sell Mars Bars to makes theirs. Every manufacturing business needs a stock holding otherwise business grinds to a shuddering halt, but that’s not the same as pernicious land banking running rife.
The start of the solution lies in planning departments getting to grips with the supply of available housing land in their area. These days, NIMBYs rule the roost in planning committees, but short term thinking won’t put a roof over their children’s heads. All across the country planners are setting targets for new homes to satisfy local demand but those targets are being missed by enormous margins.
The market isn’t failing, the market just can’t get its hand on enough stock (land) to operate efficiently. The national targets are being missed because there isn’t enough land being allocated for new homes. Land owners and developers are being forced to take planners to task at planning appeals for the failure of local authorities to fulfil their statutory duty to meet the market needs.
Without an immediate upturn in the number of sites allocated for residential consent we will see house price inflation climbing once again to unsustainable levels, and planners will be under increased pressure to justify any negative decisions at expensive appeals. Unusual and extraordinary measures are already being suggested to solve the problems of the housing market, none of which address the root issue.
The solution to avoiding meltdown is simple and obvious, but whether with communities and their elected representatives have the stomach for a longer term view is very uncertain, so I predict a house price boom.
When is a shop not a shop?
Enniskillen is the focus of at least some of the world’s attention as the G8 summit meeting hoves its not inconsiderable caravan of politicians, advisers, security, protesters and lobbyists into the news this week.
The economy of the tiny Northern Irish town with a population of only thirteen thousand has suffered more than many in recent years, but they have adopted a novel solution to mask the blight of vacant shops.
The Department of Social Development provided a £200k grant to help building owners improve the appearance of their frontages with the Shop Front Improvement Scheme.
Although the grant is available throughout 2013, those who completed the works by 31st May could receive 100% of the cost rather than the maximum 75% available for the remainder of the year.
The solutions included applied graphics that represented working shops, giving the impression of busy shops full of customers. The scheme has not been without criticism that it’s papering over the cracks to make Enniskillen look tidy for the G8 meeting, but this investment seems unlikely to have been offered if the G8 wasn’t coming to town, and as such is a welcome move.
In May 2014 somebody went and entered me into the 2015 London Marathon, putting both reputation and knees at risk.
How long to Marathon day?
Day(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)