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.
Additional £100m for Enterprise Zone construction
The investment announced by Communities Secretary Eric Pickle is intended to help enterprise zones attract business and create thousands of local jobs.
Thirteen enterprise zones have been green lighted to receive the new money for 18 projects to build service roads, car parking and other infrastructure, transforming ‘shovel ready sites into job ready sites’.
The fund, originally £60 million, is designed to help zones reach their real growth potential faster as economic engine rooms of local economies. Following a competitive bidding process the successful proposals will now undergo further testing to ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
Enterprise zones have already created 3,000 new jobs, attracted 126 businesses, generated 105,000 square metres of new commercial floorspace and secured almost £229 million of extra private sector investment.
In addition to this 5 enterprise zones are also receiving £24 million to tackle traffic bottlenecks and road congestion near their site through Department for Transport funding.
The £104 million made available for enterprise zones includes £45 million from the Homes and Communities Agency in addition to the £59 millionLocal Infrastructure Fund announced at the last Autumn Statement.
The list of shortlisted enterprise zones include:
Aerohub Business Park, Newquay, Cornwall: the investment would support the creation of a new Business Park adjacent to Newquay Airport, assisting Cornwall Council and local enterprise partnership bring to the market the sites needed to develop new aerospace related employment
Enterprise West Essex at Harlow, London Road: this project is to develop a new Life Sciences Medtech Innovation Centre alongside the existing Nortel Campus. The investment could support enabling infrastructure and site preparation works at the ex, London Road enterprise zone to enable 22,000 square metres of high grade office space.
Solent enterprise zone at Daedalus Airfield: the investment will enable the design and construction of a new 3,000 sq m business incubation centre for small and micro businesses seeking a flexible presence on the enterprise zone. It is hoped that these businesses will expand into new units being built as part of the wider regeneration project.
Masshouse – Birmingham City Centre enterprise zone: this scheme requires support for high quality public realm works together with essential public car parking in order to build major city centre office employment space.
Kirkeatham Business Park – Tees Valley enterprise zone: investment is sought to fund a new service road to support approximately 4 hectares of commercial land for development. The local authority are in the process of acquiring the land with the intention to sell smaller parcels to companies, particularly small and medium sized enterprises in the advanced manufacturing sector, who want to build their own premises on a piece meal basis.
Queens Meadow Business Park – Tees Valley enterprise zone: this scheme requires investment support for a new service road service approximately 4 hectares of commercial land for development. The intention is to improve the takeup of sites by selling smaller parcels of land to companies, likely to be small and medium sized enterprises in the advanced manufacturing sector, who want to build their own premises.
Sheffield City Region enterprise zone – Waverly: the Waverley site is the region’s largest mixed use – employment and housing – site and is planned to provide 140,000 square metres of commercial floorspace. The investment could be used to support infrastructure and site preparation works to unlock the development.
Logic Leeds – Aire Valley enterprise zone: the investment is required to accelerate the delivery of the Innovation Health Hub (IHH) on the Logic Leeds site through an access road and supporting infrastructure work. The infrastructure works will tackle drainage and flood risk for the site and bring forward the site preparation and servicing, including utilities, for initial development platforms for the new buildings.
Tower Road South, Wirral Waters enterprise zone, Liverpool: the scheme’s vision is for a ‘jobs driven’ international city waterfront on the Birkenhead and Wallasey docks, creating over 20,000 jobs and 14,000 new homes in the area. Investment is sought for site preparation and remediation infrastructure works to prepare a key element of the Tower Road South site, a planned mixed use quarter including a college or university technical college for maritime engineering.
Brough, Humber Green Port Corridor enterprise zone, East Riding of Yorkshire: Bridgehouse and BAE Systems are planning to transform a single manufacturing facility into a site suitable for many new businesses to start up. The site currently needs remediation and infrastructure work to meet environmental compliance, as well as carrying out flood risk mitigation work and installing data infrastructure.
Discovery Park, Dover: the 220 acre, former Pfizer site at Discovery Park, in Sandwich, Kent, is one of the largest research and development facilities in Europe. The enterprise zone is bidding for investment to refurbish and redesign three buildings, which were originally built for a single company. Once completed, the buildings will offer a range of offices and labs to conference space and meetings rooms.
Manchester Airport City enterprise zone: funding is being sought to upgrade and install roads and junctions, services and public realm for 2 sites at Manchester Airport providing more than 230,000 square metres of employment floorspace. The northern site will focus on office, hotel and leisure, while the southern area will provide logistics and warehousing.
Sheffield Business Park Phase 2, Sheffield: Sheffield Business Park is one of Yorkshire’s largest business parks, providing more than 2,000 jobs for the area. The Sheffield City Region enterprise zone has bid for investment to support a new road and related infrastructure work for Phase 2 of development of more than 83,000 square metres of general or bespoke offices, business, manufacturing and warehousing opportunities.
Daresbury EX/East Runcorn, Halton: the Sci-Tech Daresbury enterprise zone is bidding for funding to build 2 new bridges over the Bridgewater canal to enable development of the new homes on the site. The enterprise zone will create 10,000 high quality jobs across several hundred technology companies and developing over 1 million square metres of specialised office, laboratory and technical space.
Poulton Road, Beaufort Road, Wirral: Wirral Waters is planning to transform 500 acres and more of Birkenhead docklands and surrounding area from a deprived, under-used, environmentally poor area to a successful, mixed-use, high density place to live and work. The enterprise zone has bid for funding to remediate the West Float site as well as improve local highways to link the development to the nearby International trade centre and the advanced engineering automotive park.
Arena Central, Birmingham: Arena Central is a 9.2 acre regeneration site in the heart of Birmingham City Centre. The enterprise zone has applied for investment to demolish the remaining buildings on the site, including a registry office, exhibition hall and TV studios. The investment will also fund a new pedestrian link between Broad Street and Holliday Street and help create ready development plots on Bridge Street and Broad Street.
Argyle Works, Birmingham: the Greater Birmingham and Solihull local enterprise partnership are upgrading the city’s digital infrastructure, bringing ultra-fast broadband to the area and boosting business. The local enterprise partnership are bidding for investment to convert a warehouse into a new data facility on Great Barr Street, in an area which could act as gateway to the Digbeth and city centre enterprise zones.
Lancashire enterprise zones Samlesbury, Ribble Valley: to make this enterprise zone area, which sits within the current BAE Systems site, attractive to investors and tenants a new access road and utilities is required. The site will build on the aerospace capabilities in the region and cater for the specific requirements of an advanced manufacturing facility.
On 31 May the Department for Transport announcement the second tranche of funding from the £170 million Local Pinch Point Fund. In total, 5 enterprise zones benefited from £24 million to tackle key bottlenecks:
Birmingham City Centre enterprise zone has received £5.9 million for 2 projects: enhancements to relieve congestion and safety concerns on the city’s ring road, and expansion of facilities at 3 park and ride locations into Birmingham City Centre, including provision for car sharing bays, electric vehicle charging points and cycle hubs
Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft enterprise zone has received £9.4 million for 2 projects: a new link road to unlock significant housing development and employment land immediately to the west of the enterprise zone, and for phase 5 of the Lowestoft Northern Spine Road. The scheme will provide a 1.1 km new single carriageway and shared walk/cycleway between the Millennium Way/Bentley Drive roundabout and north of the Blundeston Road junction on the A12.
Science Vale UK enterprise Zone in Oxfordshire has received £5 million for the provision of an innovative ‘hamburger’ style roundabout enabling the junction to operate effectively within planned levels of growth for the area and helping to manage traffic onto the A34. This funding is subject to further clarification on design/technical issues, with the Highways Agency and the council working on the details.
North East enterprise zone received £1.8 million for improvements at 3 strategic junctions required to support the development of the Sunderland Low Carbon Zone. The 3 junctions are located at the intersection of principal routes (A1231, A183 and A690) with the A19 at Sunderland.
Black Country enterprise zone received £2.5 million to improve the standard of the road from Headway Road to Patshull Avenue. An additional right turn facility at Pendeford Business Park will also be provided to reduce delays to ahead traffic.
The benefits to business of enterprise zones is that they are good on taxation, planning restrictions and IT capacity – the 3 things most often cited as new business deterrents:
- significant tax breaks – full business rate relief for 5 years, worth £275,000
- smart and simple planning rules with automatic green lights for particular businesses mean fast-track development and rapid start-up potential
- infrastructure designed with business in mind: excellent transport links and superfast broadband for global business too
Additional enterprise zone benefits for business include:
- Britain now has the lowest corporation tax in the G7
- each zone was carefully located in a major business cities or place set to become commercial or hi-tech business hubs
- each zone has a specific focus so potential customers and suppliers can easily see where like-minded businesses, supply chains and workforce expertise are
- local councils are committed through new financial incentives from government
- ‘soft landing’ packages with pre-agreed developer deals, accountants or estate agents make it even easier to set up a business
Examples of progress
A recent Deloitte report described Bristol zone as a ‘magnet for investment’ with the “enterprise zone at the heart of this growth”.
Sheffield and Birmingham were recently listed in the top 50 global enterprise zones.
Royal Docks just announced a £1 billion deal with a Chinese investor to build a 3.2 million square feet state-of-the-art business park for Chinese and Far East businesses.
Ashok Leyland, India’s second largest commercial vehicle manufacturer recently announced that they will be opening a research and development centre at MIRA Technology Park in Leicester’s enterprise zone.
Northampton, home of the Waterside enterprise zone, was recently cited as making the best economic recovery in the UK by the Centre for Cities. Only in May Freefoam Building Products announced that over 40 jobs will be created as the company expands in the enterprise zone.
Renewable energy company, Estover Energy, has announced plans to develop a £65 million biomass plant at Discovery Park enterprise zone that will supply renewable heat and electricity across the 220-acre park and create 160 jobs.
Vantec, the Japanese logistics firm completed their new logistics centre at the North East enterprise zone at the start of February and expect to more than double employment (to 230) on the site. Due to the ongoing success in attracting investment, they have been have granted a 40 hectare extension to the zone.
Manchester’s Airport City enterprise zone has a planning application for the development of a £100 million World Logistics Hub that will generate more than 1,800 new jobs over the next decade – in addition to construction jobs.
Mixed fortunes across the Yorkshire office property market
BNP Paribas are reporting that the office marketplace in Leeds is on the rise again. By contrast, Sheffield occupier demand continues to slip back despite prime rents remaining at around £19.50/sq.ft, substantially below Leeds’s £25/sq.ft.
Flight from Utopia @ Park Hill Pt 2
Flight from Utopia @ Park Hill Pt 1
We’re going to need a bigger data centre
Ed Goring passed on an amazing set of statistics a few days ago in relation to our data centre project. The rise of Big Data is predicted to see data centre capacity to undergo massive growth over the next few years, from 0.79 zetabytes of data in 2009 to 35 zetabytes in 2020.
This really does underline the size of the opportunity in both real estate and IT terms as business moves fully into the Cloud over the next few years.
To misquote the late Roy Scheider in Jaws; we’re going to need a bigger data centre.
Infographic courtesy of www.csc.com
Cut price tendering
The University of Sheffield’s scheme for it’s new Engineering Faculty is in the news again, but this time not for the planning issues raised by the proposed listed building demolition – that issue still rumbling on with talk of legal action to prevent it.
Balfour Beatty have just been announced as the successful bidder for the main contract with a bid of £49.8m. That compares favourably from the Client’s point of view with the original budget estimate of £80m, and beat rival bids from BAM Construct, Bowmer & Kirkland, Interserve, Miller Construction and Sir Robert McAlpine.
At first sight it looks either like financial suicide for the contractor, or storing up a future contract dispute for the University. But Balfour Beatty are a smart firm who aren’t likely to have made a mistake in their offer, and the University of Sheffield is a savvy procurer who will readily throw out tenders that aren’t in their interests.
It’s common practice to submit below cost bids for a variety of reasons, but this is more than a priced to win tender that’s a couple of million below projected costs, and value engineering isn’t going to find tens of millions of savings. With main contractors final margins close to zero anyway, there’s clearly something else is going on here that we’re not aware of yet. It will be interesting to see what twiddles and twirls they have incorporated into their bid to bring it over the line.
Heseltine is right – London is sucking the life blood out of the rest of the UK
Lord Heseltine’s report: No stone unturned in the pursuit of growth from last year accurately drew a picture of the UK that is divided… London + The Rest.
What we need here isn’t more support for what has become quaintly known as “the regions”, we simply need HMG to focus less on their Westminster doorstep to reverse a century of centralisation.
London can fend for itself, and it should be left to do so. The people and business outside London aren’t less capable. If anything they have become more resourceful to survive in an environment where you can’t charge what you like simply for being there.
It’s not only bad for the UK, it’s actually bad for everything inside the M25 where people feel locked in and afraid that if they move out they won’t be able to afford to get back.
Today is budget day in the UK and Michael Heseltine has been doing the rounds of studios beforehand. His frank and refreshing appearance a short while ago on the BBC Today programme with Evan Davies might be a precursor of what is to follow later today. Let’s hope so.
Why property and construction matters on Budget Day
Wednesday is Budget Day. Chancellor George Osborne will take to the dispatch box to delight or disappoint, depending on what vested interests you happen to have this year. What does seem agreed upon among the financial experts is that it will be a moderate budget that doesn’t push the boat out politically. Bravado doesn’t seem to be the fashionable thing for politicians these days, so we should see a muted affair overall. That said, there are signs that there will be some long overdue good news for construction and property industries.
Construction is still only operating at around 55% of the level seen at the peak in 2007. That height saw construction costs, property values and land prices climb into the stratosphere to unsustainable heights up to three times the level of the late 1990’s, resulting in the worst property industry crash in modern times.
Since then, construction costs have dropped moderately, while property values remain in a delicate willing seller / willing buyer balance, with neither party having much of an upper hand, either because of lack of funding on the buyers’ part, or high borrowings on the sellers’.
Land prices are dropping even faster, back to the levels seen around ten years ago in some places as vendors gradually realise that they have sat on their nest egg for so long that it has gone off.
So far, so bad. What we do have on the up side is a sizeable industry that accounts for around a tenth of the UK economy, which employs over two million workers in more than 300,000 businesses of all shapes and sizes.
While we’ve seen decline in employment and volume since 2008 it remains almost unique, in that it is still fully formed with the capacity to literally go to work tomorrow, without no delays, no infrastructure investment and no additional upskilling. All construction needs is some orders and we can get to work on implementing those planning consents the very next day.
What does that mean for the budget? There are various calls to action, including from John Cridland, the Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) who says that spending £1.25bn on affordable housing would generate £18bn for wider economy and create another 75,000 jobs; “To boost the construction sector, we are calling for 50,000 new affordable homes to be built, incentives for refurbishing empty homes and the housing guarantee scheme to be extended to all types of housing.”.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders is also looking at housebuilding in terms of incentives by urging the chancellor to extend NewBuy beyond 2015, and address the anomaly under which the scheme allows access to home-ownership with a 5% deposit but means that a buyer is likely to be taxed because the purchase is liable for stamp duty.
Two weeks ago we might have had a foretaste of what’s in store when Michael Gove, the education minister announced £4bn for spending on refurbishing schools through local authorities. This recognised that the systems are already in place if finance is provided.
Let’s be crystal clear though – construction isn’t a special case in need of additional support. It makes sense to build. Not only for those employed directly and indirectly on sites, in offices, and on factory floors, but for the wider economy. Construction is particularly good at achieving re-spend of the money invested. In other words, money spent on builders, architects, engineers, plant and machine hire, etc goes quickly back into the local economy to be re-spent again, and again, and again. It stays local. Making lots of smaller pockets of cash start spinning tomorrow is better for communities, cities and UK PLC than waiting decades for more valuable infrastructure projects like HS2 to happen.
We should hope that Mr Osborne aims his target at the less glamorous end of the construction industry with a serious, but achievable investment that will reap rewards now.
Demolishing Jessop’s
Two days ago, Sheffield City Council voted to confirm an extraordinary decision to demolish a Grade 2 listed building – the remains of the 1902 portion of the Jessop Hospital for Women in Sheffield. The reason for the vote was that in December they took the same decision but had failed to consult with the requisite external bodies outlined on the campaign against demolition website.
This saga has rumbled on for some time. At the early stages it seemed that the planning department were extremely critical of many aspects of the scheme by RMJM Architects. Make no mistake, RMJM are great architects and they already have a track record in Sheffield with the luscious Information Commons building just over the road from the Jessop’s site. However, the demolition proposal remained, and over time the concerns expressed by Sheffield planners seem to have been successfully nullified or worn down by the applicant and their team.
That has made Sheffield people hopping mad! There is a petition with over two and a half thousand names calling for the Secretary of State for Communities to call in the decision because “Sheffield City Council has failed to properly enforce planning law and its own policy.” Time will tell if the council has failed to act correctly. If they have failed, and then reconfirmed their original decision, the consequences will make fascinating spectating.
In the meantime it sends out a confused message to developers, architects, planners, investors and citizens. Is the planning department acting correctly? Can they be relied on to follow procedure? Is the planning process honest and transparent in Sheffield? Is Sheffield somewhere to do business? Is there some hidden political agenda going on behind the scenes?
Let’s be clear here. Preserving buildings just because they are old is not a good enough reason for retention, but this is a fine building with an extensive local heritage and functional context. It is an uncommon example of high quality neo-gothic Edwardian architecture in the city and it’s status is rightly reflected in its Grade 2 English Heritage listing.
- Jessop Hospital in 2010. This hospital for women replaced an older building with just nine beds and was funded by Thomas Jessop, a wealthy steelworks owner. The new building had 57 beds, and an addition to the west in 1902 provided a further hundred. It is in a Gothic Revival style in brick with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. EH
Incorporation of the existing structure into this otherwise excellent project should be considered as a de-minimis requirement in this instance. It’s not a tough architectural call, the space impact seems to be minimal or non existent, and it would be an excellent PR move by the University, showing that they are an integral part of Sheffield’s community and not too big for their boots.
A university does need space to breath and spaces that inspire. But, we must also remember that communities need their roots. There can be few greater anchors than the place where most of those people were born, and it can’t be asking too much to retain one small corner for those feelings of place to be kept alive.
University of Sheffield project page ¦ Architects Journal article ¦ www.jessophospital.org.uk ¦ Facebook page ¦ Sheffield Star article
Developing in a more challenging environment
One thing about the property business is that it’s never boring. We like to think that we are pretty good at innovating new ways of creating space and having ideas that make a project happen. Then something comes along which makes us think again.
Right down at the bottom of the planet is where the British Antarctic Survey ply their trade. As challenging locations go it’s hard to think of anywhere more difficult, unless you are partial to a life underwater or inside the cone of an active volcano.
The history of the planet is literally captured right there in the ice. At the moment those clever people are trying to work out how to get the Lake Ellsworth drilling project back on track to discover more about how life can survive and thrive at the extremes – the extremophiles of Planet Earth.
Every Antarctic summer dozens of scientists (and a few extreme pen-pushers, journalists and tourists) join the overwinter maintenance team to study the climate past and present, and carry out experiments in this unique and pollution free environment. That presents an obvious problem; where will they live?
Halley I
A series of research stations have been built since the 1920’s by the BAS, from the wooden huts of Halley I which lasted 12 years, to the steel structures of Halley V. Every single one of them has eventually succumbed to the shifting ice that tears apart the foundations, and the 1.5m of snow that crushes and collapses the roofs in a few short years, even with maintenance.
A decade ago, with Halley V coming to the end of its life-cycle an RIBA competition put out calls for designs for Halley VI on behalf of BAS.
Challenges included the shifting ice sheets and snow mentioned above, as well as the building being transported by ship to be offloaded onto the ice and then dragged ten miles by bulldozer to the site, making design problems like -30 degrees, 24 hour darkness and 30 m/s continuous wind speeds seem trivial.
Hugh Broughton Architects won the competition, and contracts for construction were exchanged in 2006. The winning design eschewed traditional methods and opted for a modular design that looked more like a Star Wars hunting lodge than a laboratory.
In essence, the seven linked pods raise all the living, science, administration and ancillary accommodation into the air along with the life support systems. Each pod has four legs that can be jacked up to allow snow to be bulldozed underneath, keeping the units above the snow and ice build up.
But there is another snag, and it’s a big one. The whole research complex moves about half a mile every year towards the edge of the glacier. Halley I, Halley II and Halley III have all eventually reappeared in the ice-cliff before crashing down into the ocean.
Halley III research station re-emerging from the ice shelf years after being abandoned.
To get around this problem the legs of each pod have giant skis that also allows it to be towed to a new location, extending the lifetime of the whole complex much further into the future than was previously possible.
Construction of the Halley Vi Research Station completed this month (February 2013).You can read the whole, amazing, riveting, story on the British Antarctic Survey project blog.
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?
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