What we do

2008 - autumn

ACTIVITIES REPORT 

Here's a brief overview of what we've been up to in the  four months from August to November 2008.

Empty property campaign

• we have significantly ramped up our campaign against the removal of relief from business rates for empty property. Our focus has been with ministers and Government officials, with Parliament and in the media.
• we have met with officials from Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the Treasury and have submitted evidence to them on the impact of the removal of the relief. We have not yet had a positive response and are seeking a high level meeting with ministers.
• we have been working with MPs and other Parliamentarians to encourage support for our campaign within Parliament, particularly increasing the signatories to early day motions (now over 100). We have worked with a wide variety of other trade bodies, regional development bodies and councils to gather evidence and strengthen our case.
• we have achieved a large amount of high profile broadcast media and press coverage, both nationally and locally. This has been extremely useful in encouraging the provision of more evidence and demonstrating the strength of feeling to the Government.

Planning

• we successfully launched our Planning Manifesto in September, highlighting 12 changes we believe should be made to improve the planning system, and have subsequently created an implementation plan for each of the recommendations.
• we have submitted our response to the Killian Pretty Review on improvements to the planning application process and will be encouraging the Government to implement the review's recommendations.
• we have generally supported the proposed changes to Planning Policy Statement 6: town centre investment, which give greater emphasis to wider economic factors in developments.
• we tabled probing amendments to the committee stage of the Planning Bill (CIL) in the House of Lords recently, addressing our three main concerns with the primary legislation. The Government's response was not encouraging; we will press the amendments again at report stage and continue negotiations with CLG and ministers in private.

Regeneration and development

• we launched the independent report we commissioned into the economic benefits of high density development (including tall buildings), which was very timely given the Mayor's intention to advance changes to the London Plan.
• we will shortly issue a report calling for the introduction of tax increment financing (funding infrastructure from the increase in local taxation flowing from new development), which we will discuss with Government and use to stimulate a wider public debate.
• we have drafted a paper with the Regeneration and Development Committee to highlight our concerns on a recent decision by the European Court of Justice (The Roanne Case) concerning EU procurement requirements. We have suggested some solutions and are working with CLG and the LGA to try to overcome the problems.

Sustainability

• we oversaw the All Party Parliamentary Urban Development Group's inquiry into increasing the energy efficiency of existing buildings, and produced and launched the report with over 130 guests at the reception including MPs and Peers.
• we met with the Global Reporting Initiative to work out how property companies can develop a way to report their sustainability impacts at the organisational level. We have helped assemble a small group of property experts from around the world who will create a draft GRI real estate supplement for consultation.
• we are bringing together the main industry players (GPA, UK GBC, Upstream and IPD) to establish which sustainability impacts the UK industry should measure to allow comparability and granularity of performance data.
• we have convened a pan-industry group to draft guidance on how landlords and tenants can apportion the costs and benefits of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Scheme. The guidance is likely to receive some form of Government endorsement.
• ahead of the Government's promised consultation paper, we supported the All Party Urban Development Group's research into how, and to what extent, the Government could incentivise energy efficiency and carbon reductions in existing buildings, including the use of fiscal incentives.
• we are feeding our views into early stage negotiations on the successor to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. An early draft suggests extending display energy certificates (DEC) to private sector buildings commonly used by the public.

Residential

• we generally welcomed the Rugg Review of the private rented sector as it supported a number of our views on tax issues. However, we are concerned with the review's lack of support for the professional rented sector generally and build to let in particular.
• we are continuing to lobby for changes to the tax regime that will support greater institutional investment in residential property, including changes to the REIT regime and the removal of higher rate SDLT on acquisitions of multiple dwellings.
• we have also engaged Allsop to model the financial side of build to let and to identify what could be changed to make it an attractive long term investment  proposition. The results should be available in mid-November.
• we are hopeful the London Mayor's new Housing Strategy favour the encouragement of greater institutional investment. We are making a submission to the Mayor's ‘Direction of Travel' document, covering housing, tall buildings, views and the use of s106 to secure space for small retailers.
• we are nearing completion of a web based tool that will allow members and others to create and print out assured shorthold tenancy agreements.

Commercial

• we provided secretariat services to a meeting of the Owners' and Occupiers' Property Forum - bringing together landlords and retail tenants - to consider monthly rents and other associated issues. The SPF has liaised with our Scottish members to discover their views on the debate and to report back on BPF developments.
• we have been participating in a sub-group of the Lease Code Working Group to examine the case for changing the lease code, and for producing supplementary information, to include the considerations landlords and tenants should take into account when adopting green lease principles. 
• we have successfully recruited most of the main agents to proactively promote the code; we want to gain some publicity for this and turn our attentions to the legal community. We will shortly receive some recommendations from the CLAS Board for promoting the code and CLAS.
• the Owners' and Occupiers' Property Forum is developing a guide illustrating simple energy efficiency measures that have a short payback and can acceptably be recharged via service charges.
• we will use the anticipated Business Rate Supplement Bill to continue our campaign to have property owners formally included in business improvements districts. We are encouraging other trade and local authority bodies to support us and are campaigning jointly with the BRC to raise the issue in the Houses of Parliament.
• we are keen to organise a joint event with the City Property Association on DEFRA's plans to protect London from flooding over the next century. We are also talking to the Government and ABI on flood cover and investment in flood defences.

Finance and investment

• we are considering how we might engage with the lending banks to encourage a constructive and supportive approach to covenant breaches and refinancing situations in the current economic climate.
• we are planning to bring together finance/tax representatives from fund manager members to explore whether we could be doing more to support their interests.
• we are continuing to work with EPRA on tackling the tax issues that currently complicate cross border investment in European real estate, and on various accounting matters. 
• we have responded to numerous formal and informal consultations on SDLT and VAT matters, and continue to monitor developments, with a view to making representations as and when appropriate.
• with the invaluable support of Martin Scammell of Eversheds, we will shortly be relaunching the BPF VAT newsletter on a monthly basis.

Scotland

• we have been at the forefront of the campaign to further reform the Scottish planning system. We have endorsed a Scottish Government-CoSLA-statutory consultee commitment of shared objectives which was launched at a recent Planning Summit, co-hosted by SPF with the Scottish Government, attended by over 230 delegates. 
• some of our SPF members have had extensive involvement in stakeholder meetings on the forthcoming new Scottish Planning Act (2006). We have engaged with strategic development planning authorities based around Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
• we have achieved a commitment from the Scottish Government to postpone fundamental reform of developer contributions in view of the current economic climate and instead to focus on making existing policy guidance more appropriate.
• we gave verbal evidence to the Scottish Parliament on the impact of the economy on the industry and we have had follow-up calls for more detail on issues such as the introduction of tax increment financing in Scotland.  
• we will brief the Scottish Building Standards division on the implications of recent proposals to regulate to incentivise a reduction in carbon emissions from existing commercial property stock in Scotland. 
• we have raised members' awareness of the EPC timescale in Scotland and have questioned Scottish Ministers on the use of a different EPC methodology to the rest of the UK.
• we have met both the Keeper of the Registers in Scotland and the Scottish Law Commission to address members' concerns with the Scottish Land Registration Service and the Scottish conveyancing system, which is currently under review by the Scottish Law Commission.  We have had commitments to engage in a number of areas. 
• we expressed our concerns to Cabinet Secretary John Swinney MSP that a serious lag in infrastructure investment is resulting from the failure of the Scottish Government to engage in PFI deals. The Government is establishing a Scottish Futures Trust to use non-distributive profit methods of private finance rather than traditional PFI, a move that has gone down badly with the private sector in Scotland.
• we held an informal dinner with Transport Scotland to raise members' concerns that it has not done enough to engage them on how it can find means of raising funding for new infrastructure. The event was sponsored by Macdonald Estates. 
• we have initiated a liaison group of Scottish members who are interested in tax policy, especially SDLT and VAT.
• we have carried out other policy work on the private rented residential sector, where there is a groundswell of political support for a tenancy deposit scheme, arbitration reform and land value taxation.

Events

• our inaugural Grand Annual Dinner was held in the gothic splendour of the Royal Courts of Justice on 22 October. The event proved very popular and we had no difficulty selling the 60 tables the venue can hold.
• we are now organising the annual residential dinner and conference. The dinner is on 26 January at the RAC Club and the conference is on 27 January at Allen and Overy.
• we have held SPF membership receptions in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
• we held our third Communications Directors' Breakfast, hosted by GVA Grimley.
• we have held two President's (recruitment) and two Chief Executive's (members) lunches.

Related committees:

• Policy Committee

Latest 2008 - autumn documents:

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