The Thorncliffe team

Do you understand local government? Are you a political activist in one of the mainstream parties? Do you hold, or have you held, elected office, perhaps as a councillor? Is politics in your DNA?

Thorncliffe is a very successful established agency, with 18 years of results and experience in the local government and property sector. Our team works across a number of high-profile clients and sometimes controversial projects to deliver community and political strategies to achieve results. We’re looking for someone with drive, determination and expertise to help us make 2018 a great year.

GO TO OUR RECRUITMENT PAGE FOR MORE DETAILS

Tuesday’s Evening Standard ran a front page story suggesting the Conservatives will fail badly at the local elections in London.  So what’s the truth?

London borough council elections come around every four years, this year on Thursday 3 May.

Thorncliffe are preparing a detailed scientific borough by borough analysis of the local elections.  You can find out more, order and purchase a tailored version of this analysis here.

For those of you who want just an overview, here’s a little insight:

Lord Hayward, who provided the information to the Standard, predicts that the Tories will lose Barnet to Labour and Kingston to the Lib Dems. He goes on to say that his party will face difficulties holding on to Wandsworth, Westminster, Richmond and Kensington and Chelsea and will likely lose seats in Bexley, Bromley and Hillingdon but should hold on here.

Thorncliffe has polled its own members of staff, all of which are political, for their collective wisdom. This is not a scientific analysis, but most of us are already deeply embedded in local campaigns across the capital and beyond.

The consensus is that overall Labour is expected to make some gains, the number of councils flipping will not be as high as Lord Hayward predicts.

Barnet is judged to be the most likely council to be lost by the Conservatives with 70% of members of staff predicting it will be won by Labour.

Wandsworth is believe to be the second most likely borough to change hands with 45% of staff members of the view that Labour will win here.

Only 27% of staff predict that Kingston Upon Thames will fall to the Lib Dems.

And 9% of staff believe that the Tories will lose Richmond or Hillingdon.

No one at Thorncliffe currently predicts that anyone other than the Conservatives will win Kensington & Chelsea or Westminster or any of the other safely held Tory boroughs such as Bexley and Bromley.

There is unanimous agreement at Thorncliffe that three councils Labour took off the Tories in 2014, Croydon, Hammersmith & Fulham and Redbridge will all stay Labour in May.

However 20% of staff members believe that the Conservatives will take back Harrow off Labour in a result that will go against the London-wide swing. The rest of the currently held Labour boroughs are all expected to stay red, even in Haringey where political infighting and an overall shift to the hard left will not be enough to see any party other than Labour holding that council.

One point to note was that both Labour and Conservative members are more pessimistic of their own party’s chances at the election in May. Not one Labour member is of the opinion that Conservatives will lose Wandsworth while the majority of Tories in the office believe that they will.

This could be a result of Brexit; old political coalitions are giving way to new ones, based less on class and more on outlook. Affluent but metropolitan Conservative voters could be tempted by parties with a stronger ‘Remain’ message while working class Labour voters who voted ‘Leave’ may be being tempted to vote Conservative in May. This would lead to a weaker vote in the two main parties’ strongest areas which could lead to less optimistic predictions.

Over these politically turbulent next four months Thorncliffe can offer a bespoke and comprehensive political analysis of a borough or ward where you may have a development interest.

To order our detailed scientific borough by borough analysis of the local elections, click on the button below.

We’re really pleased to have been a finalist in this years’ Public Affairs Awards in the Planning Campaign of the Year category.

A special needs school for severely disabled kids in north London was faced with council officials recommending refusal of their new expanded school.

Thorncliffe were brought on, at a very late stage, to identify, harness and enlist support from the community, politicians and celebrities.

We used the most effective arguments as our message to councillors, and we secured the support of the local community to back the school.

MD, Richard Patient, said

‘We’re really pleased to have overturned the recommendation for refusal in Barnet.  Without our strategic help, it’s unlikely the school would have been granted planning consent, and there would be no new school. The tightness of the vote proves this.

Within the very short timeframe we had, we hit our objectives to harness massive community support, and gain the support of local councillors.

This campaign was special to us, as it gave us the opportunity to work for special needs kids with severe disabilities. It was special to others because the local community had been waiting for such a long time to get this new school.’

At Thorncliffe, we have our Core Values – for Quality, Honesty & Integrity, Results Driven, and Developing and Innovating.

This year, we’ve inaugurated our Core Value awards, and we’re delighted to have awarded them to four of our excellent colleagues.

Please excuse their attire – the awards were given just prior to our Christmas lunch!

Congratulations to America for building such a fantastic, inspiring building very close to our HQ in Vauxhall.

Thorncliffe has been involved with many of the buildings along the Albert Embankment and in Vauxhall Cross that are currently springing up, and we’re delighted we have such a great neighbour.

Congratulations are also due to Galliard and AFC Wimbledon, which this week received their planning consent.

Housing and Planning Minister Alok Sharma this week announced that planning fees would be increasing by 20% in the next few weeks, as promised by the Housing White Paper.

In a Parliamentary debate on Wednesday, Sharma rejected the full cost recovery approach which has been on the Conservative agenda for many years, but kept open the option to charge more.

The 20% increase in planning fees will be enacted in statutory regulations over the coming weeks and is a step towards addressing the widespread concerns of under-resourced local planning authorities. With housing one of the major issues in politics now, the Minister stressed the importance of having well-resourced, effective and efficient local authority planning departments to provide new homes and deliver economic growth.  He also stated that they expected local authorities to match the recommended fee increases with an ongoing improvement of service.

Rejecting full cost recovery, the Minister said that this, by itself, does not provide a link to service improvements. “Charging at cost recovery removes the incentives for local authorities to reduce their cost, if they know they can pass the cost directly on to applicants.  However, with this 20% increase, it will still be the case that most planning fees represent a small fraction of the full cost of any development to which they relate.”

The extra cost comes at a time when former cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin is looking at ‘landbanking’.  Letwin is expected to bring a forensic approach to his review of the gap between permissions granted and homes built, and will report in the Spring.

To get in touch with us about the White Paper, the government’s review into planning, or Sir Oliver Letwin’s review into ‘landbanking’, email us.