News

On Valentine’s Day, its good to remember love.

Love for what you do.

Love for the results you get.

And love for the friends, partners and clients you have. Oh, steady on there.

We hope we’ve built this business on love. Our colleagues working with each other, our clients love working with us, our suppliers love supplying us, and everyone loves seeing us doing well.

Love is about passion, love is about care.

Starbucks will do well if it continues to love creating the best coffee experience. Apple will do well if it continues to love creating the world’s best consumer technology.

We care about the customer experience (which includes calling them partners and friends). We like to think we are more connected with what people in our industry are thinking and feeling. We like to talk openly about why others might love being part of our vision.

In this new economy, the idea is to love what you do. And at Thorncliffe, that’s what we do.

Have a love-filled Valentine’s ❤

We’re honoured to have been shortlisted for our work in Barnet last year on a special educational needs and disabilities school in the category of Community Engagement Campaign of the Year, by the PR Moment awards.

The client run a school in north London for children with special educational needs and disabilities and have needed to move to a new school for several years. The school wants their pupils to live in a world where they have the same opportunities as their mainstream peers. The client was dismayed to discover that their plans to give an extra 72 school places to children in need was facing refusal by council officers. Despite the new school site being the last option for their expansion, officers thought that the needs of the children should be outweighed by the harm proposed to the Grade 2 listed building currently on the site.

Thorncliffe were brought on, at a very late stage, to coordinate and harness the overwhelming community support for the new school, and demonstrated this with a packed out, polite, public gallery at the committee meeting.

A majority of councillors agreed were convinced by the community’s emotive arguments to overturn the officers’ recommendation, which meant the application was approved and our client gained the vital planning consent they needed to build the new school.

Despite the difficulties in Haringey and Harlow this week, with the resignation of leader Claire Kober and Jon Clempner, most moderate Labour boroughs have kept a Momentum takeover at bay. However those same moderate Labour council leaders, who are looking at the election but one, in 2022, are likely to shift towards Momentum-appeasing policies in the future.

This week Claire Kober resigned as leader of Haringey Council after Labour’s ruling NEC sought to mediate with the council leadership over the controversial Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) scheme. The scheme is a public private partnership with Lendlease to redevelop council housing estates in Haringey.

A leadership election will likely take place before the May elections and it is expected that an anti-HDV candidate will succeed her. Haringey, under Claire Kober’s leadership, has been one of the most pro-development boroughs in London in recent years. A change in leadership could herald a different direction for Haringey in their attitude towards development, particularly flagship regeneration schemes.

Whilst in Harlow, Clempner resigned from his post as Leader, as a councillor, and as a member of the Labour party, citing “an active campaign against my leadership by a local Momentum organiser, being called a neo-Nazi by some Corbyn t-shirt wearing person outside the Labour Party Conference, and events at a national level targeting Labour Councillors and Labour Councils”.

Meanwhile, in Newham Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz OBE has emerged as a contender for the Mayoralty, throwing into doubt the position of longstanding Mayor Sir Robin Wales. Cllr Fiaz has been one of the most vocal proponents for mixed communities on the SDC. If successful in her bid Newham could become tougher in negotiations with developers over affordable housing.

Other local authorities are facing growing opposition to their housing plans. Leftwing activists and community groups are joining forces in slamming urban regeneration schemes and housing projects where developers are not offering enough affordable homes. Southwark council deferred the Elephant & Castle plans over a lack of affordable housing. In Westminster Labour councillors have questioned plans for 1700 new homes on Church Street again about affordable housing numbers.

Buoyed by Jeremy Corbyn’s strong showing in the general election last year, Momentum activists are increasingly flexing their muscles in the Labour party and challenging the way Labour councils do deals with property developers. At Labour party conference, Jeremy Corbyn said that if he became Prime Minister he would ensure any large redevelopments required the approval of local residents. In the Vauxhall constituency Labour party members passed a motion to back ‘meaningful and transparent’ ballots of locals on all big regeneration schemes.

Opposition to developers housing schemes do not come solely from the left of the Labour party, it is crossing party lines. The Liberal Democrats are joining the chorus of calls for more affordable housing provision along with the Greens. Both are echoing local resident’s views that the houses being built are simply not affordable and are pricing people out of London boroughs altogether. In Haringey the Liberal Democrats have been opposed to the HDV since its inception, outflanking the centrist Labour administration.

While we have not seen Momentum councillors selected in other boroughs in anything like the numbers we have seen in Haringey the direction of travel for all Labour administrations is the same; much stricter on affordable housing and tenure types. Consequently it should be expected that there will be tougher negotiations over affordable housing between developers and councils in the future.

Contact Richard Patient and his Thorncliffe Labour colleagues for more information about Momentum.

For the past decade Labour-run councils in London have been dominated by the centre and the right of the party. However since the election of Jeremy Corbyn, the subsequent influx of left-leaning members and the creation of left-wing group Momentum the political gulf between the average Labour Party member and the typical Labour council leader has grown wide.

The leadership in Labour boroughs that have typically welcomed developers now chafe against a membership that increasingly believe that developers are not to be trusted, council officers and politicians fail to secure appropriate levels of affordable housing and that nothing but tenures equivalent to social rent should ever be considered ‘affordable’.

We have seen this tension come to a head in Haringey. At recent Labour candidate selections in the borough almost two dozen moderate councillors failed to win the right to contest their seats at the next local elections and were instead replaced by left-leaning members running on an anti-developer platform. Most of these candidates will become Labour councillors in May and we will be likely to see Haringey become London’s first Momentum controlled council.

This week we saw the same forces at work in Southwark. According to our research, Southwark has not voted to refuse a major planning application in over two years. However on Tuesday evening the committee was due to decide on the redevelopment of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. After nearly eight hours they failed to reach a firm decision and deferred it so that their officers could draw up reasons for refusal.

Before the meeting was due to start, a protest marched outside with local Labour councillors, Elephant and Castle business owners, and even the veteran demonstrator and brother of the Labour Party Leader, Piers Corbyn, in attendance. In total 14 Labour councillors and council candidates signed a letter against the proposal. One left-wing Labour councillor, Cllr Paul Fleming (pictured above), addressed the protestors, and a moderate Labour councillor Cllr Lury, who is not usually a rebel, also addressed the crowd.

traffic stopped through south london by protesters against #Regeneration plans by #southwark council for #elephantandcastle . pic.twitter.com/ZCCtIAZpk9

— Ayshea Buksh (@AysheaBuksh) January 16, 2018

During the meeting members took their time discussing the application and hearing representations from supporters and objectors. They were forensic in their questioning. The committee’s main concerns included the effect on traders from minority communities and the lack of real social housing, and the possible closure of the bingo hall and bowling alley. Members wanted their reasons for refusal to include harm to people with protected characteristics (meaning Latin Americans). Planning officers felt this was not an area that would provide substantive reasons for refusal and requested a private audience with members. When the vote was finally taken, four members (two Labour and two Lib Dems) voted against accepting their office recommendation to approve and three members (two Labour and one Conservative) voted to accept their officer recommendation, one Labour member abstained.

After members voted not to accept the officer recommendation, the chair was unsure how to proceed, as the committee had not sought reasons to refuse an application for a couple of years.

Cllr Mark Williams, Southwark Council’s cabinet member for regeneration and new homes, said in a statement on Wednesday: “We respect the vote of the planning committee not to approve the application last night. We understand the strong feelings of many local people, particularly regarding affordable housing and business space, as these are priorities that the council shares. We remain committed to finding a solution for a new shopping centre and home for UAL’s London College of Communication that works for everyone.”

Despite only voting to defer the application the social media interpretation was (and largely remains) that the application was defeated, however the item will be back before the committee on Tuesday 30 January. Will compromises need to be made? Is the only way the application could progress is if the local residents and traders are consulted and offered a ‘fair deal’, and the social housing on the site is increased and promised to local residents?

For more information about our work in Southwark (or across London), email us here.

Here’s a BBC report of the meeting:

Summary of great report by @BBCLondonNews on #Delancey application for #ElephantandCastle Shopping Centre being rejected.

Our Chair, Patria Roman clearly says: “We don’t oppose development, we oppose THIS development because it does not offer a fair deal for our community” pic.twitter.com/VFLi4RbIH2

— Latin Elephant (@LatinElephant) January 18, 2018

Members of the Thorncliffe team have excellent insight into the new Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.  Here Thorncliffe MD Richard Patient gives his take on five key areas of concern for the new Ministry.

To find out more about work with national government and how we can help, please get in touch.

1. The name

The real news about the Ministry is not the name, it’s the people.

Housing now has four of the best brains in the government trying to deliver on what is fast becoming the number one issue of the government (maybe Brexit is still no 1 for the moment).

Sajid Javid now heads a department that contains two ministers that have been named future prime ministers (and he himself has been named a future chancellor).  Dominic Raab, the new Housing and Planning Minister, has become more prominent than at least half of the Cabinet put together – BBC Question Time last night is just his latest appearance.

Under both is Rishi Sunak, a former Goldman Sachs employee, who is clearly going places.  Rishi is likely to take the local government finance role, but Dom and Rishi are not only colleagues but close friends and Rishi is likely to be put to the tricky task of working out how to get more SME developers into the market.

Despite many commentators sniggering about the name change this past week, it’s been done for a very important reason.  If Housing is the number one policy of the Government, then Housing should be in the title of the Ministry.  That helps to remind Sajid’s Cabinet colleagues that housing is his number one priority, but more importantly reminds staff in the Ministry that this is the priority of the government.  Names matter.

2.  SMEs

The government are aghast that the number of SME developers have fallen dramatically over the past few years.  They put this on the radar in the Housing White Paper last year.  Is it about finance?  That’s the task of Rishi Sunak, who understands this sector, to find out.

3.  Letwin review

I mentioned there were four massive brains in the new Ministry, but then only named three of them.  Oliver Letwin has a brain bigger than all of the rest of the government, and he has been tasked with a review to find out why planning consents don’t get built, and what to do about it.  Expect an announcement about how this is going to happen imminently.

4.  Green Belt and new towns

Most commentators have read what Dominic Raab has said about green belt (“green belt is sacrosanct”) and concluded that green belt is sacrosanct and the government won’t be altering green belt policy any time soon.

This is too simplistic an analysis.  Yes, the quantity of green belt is not going to reduce.  But Dominic is a pragmatist above everything else, and if a good argument (emphasis on ‘good’) can be made to move green belt to allow housing development to take place, then we should expect the argument to be given an extremely good hearing.  Maybe his previous comments can be put down to the seat he represents – Esher and Walton.

New towns have been on the government’s agenda (Labour and Conservative) for the past twenty years.  Expect this to be given fresh impetus, particularly in the triangle between Oxford and Cambridge.

5.  Stamp Duty

The other player looming large over the new Ministry is Philip Hammond.  Philip has been bombarded with representations from developers telling him that high rates of stamp duty are detrimental, killing the market and unjust.

Hammond cut the stamp duty for first time buyers but the answer is an absolute firm “No” when asked to reduce it generally.  Don’t expect high rates of stamp duty to come down anytime soon, at least whilst Hammond is at the Treasury.  It might be having an adverse effect on the housing market, but the Treasury under Hammond has looked at the tax revenues it is bringing in and concluded that the electorate won’t accept a cut in taxes that are perceived to mainly benefit wealthy people.

The priority of the Government

The Conservatives know housing is massive for the next election, probably in 2022.  They recognise that it should be possible for a professional couple to be able to buy a modest home in London and the south east, and see that this is not possible at the moment – they know this is electoral suicide if this continues.  Conservatives, after all, are the party of social mobility.  But they also don’t want to crash the market.

A difficult one.

To find out more about work with national government and how we can help, please get in touch.