Newsroom

Rupert Clarke outlines focus for year as property industy president

New BPF president Rupert Clarke, head of BT pension fund manager Hermes, this week reflected on a year of challenges and lobbying successes that has seen the industry trade body continue to grow in influence and gain significant concessions on planning, regeneration, housing and real estate investment trusts (Reits).

Speaking for the first time as president of the BPF, Clarke paid tribute to outgoing president Francis Salway who, as the head of Land Securities, had made an impressive contribution to the industry’s policy successes.

“Francis’s ability to be cool and calm under pressure was a key component in achieving success at numerous ministerial meetings,” Clarke said, “and his contribution to the industry was all the more impressive when you consider the pressures exerted by his day job.”

The BPF’s most successful lobbying campaigns over the last year have focused on landlord and tenant issues such as service charges and monthly rents, the professional rented sector, improving the planning system and bring forward tax increment financing pilots. Each of these campaigns has engaged with all areas of the sector, bringing many stakeholder groups together.

“These are all policies which will help stabilise the long-term recovery of the industry,” Clarke added. “It was probably inevitable that with the deepening recession the occupiers were going to start calling for concessions, although no one would have predicted that Sir Philip Green and Lord Harris would come forward as the champions of the struggling small retailer. Francis’s own position in Sir Philip’s line of fire meant that he was exceptionally well placed to lead a measured, fair and proportionate response to the retailers’ campaign. And the way we, as an industry, sought to defuse the debate allowed us to come through this stronger and better placed to redress some of the imbalances created by what was initially very one-sided media coverage.”

Clarke went on to comment on the BPF’s award winning campaign against empty property rates, vowing that that the federation would not rest on the minor concession won in last autumn’s pre-Budget report.

There had also been a great deal of success in removing minor obstacles from the planning system following recommendations in the Killian Pretty Review which came as a result of the BPF’s Planning Manifesto.

“The succinct and direct nature of our recommendations mean that it is a model we have now used to good effect on regeneration and soon to be applied to sustainability,” Clarke said.

As well as winning ministerial commitments to pilot tax infrastructure financing districts and serious policy movement regarding developing a European-style professional rented sector in housing, the BPF has also won significant changes to the UK-Reits regime

Setting out his broad agenda for the coming year, Clarke highlighted three key areas of focus.

Responding to the downturn

“No single person or idea can be an effective solution to all the issues of the current crisis, and it is vital to be realistic,” Clarke said, “but I intend to focus my efforts on ensuring that we having the right dialogue publicly to enable us to form a considered and balanced package of measures to help support recovery. It is vital that policy-makers and the wider world fully grasp the contribution that the property sector makes and that it can contribute to economic recovery without being held back.”

Supporting landlord tenant relations (deleted ‘a’)

“It is unfortunate that there will be more business failures before we finally climb out of recession,” Clarke said. “Landlords clearly are not themselves responsible for these failures but nevertheless we are coming under increasing pressure to make concessions and it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to support our customers as they struggle to save their businesses. I would not be surprised to find the government reviving some of the less than palatable ideas, such as banning upward only rent reviews, that we successfully opposed some years ago.

“I intend, therefore, to make it a priority to establish a new entente with the occupier community, building on the work started by my predecessors through the Owners and Occupiers Forum and carried forward in the work earlier this year on monthly rents and service charges.”

Maintaining the environmental commitments

“We cannot afford to forget about our environmental commitments,” Clarke said, “and with the heightened political focus on renewable energy and carbon emissions, no government would let us.
So I intend to blow the trumpet regarding what we have already achieved and keep banging on about all the things we have yet to do. The BPF has done a good job in getting Government to understand the impact – and often shortcomings – of its proposed legislation and regulation. But we also need to be proactive

“We have to ensure that as an industry we are doing all we can to make our buildings more resource efficient and where that requires tough choices, we should not be afraid to make them. Just as we did through our contribution to regeneration, this is a great opportunity for our industry to show that we are a force for good in society and not just a bunch of profit seeking landlords.”

For more information call the BPF on 020 7828 0111,and for all PR and media queries, please contact Andrew Teacher, Head of Media, on 020 7802 0113 or 07968 12 45 45 or ateacher@bpf.org.uk.