POLITICS
L-R: Robin Pointon, Jon
Parker and Narinder Singh Nijjar spoke at the
Chamber's roundtable
exploring the future of how we live, work and move in the East Midlands
REGION TO BENEFIT
SEGRO Logistics Park East Midlands Gateway is a 700-acre site next to the airport occupied by huge warehouses
FROM PROPERTY BOOM The exodus from London into the regions has been a trend many estate agents had noticed pre-pandemic – and like many movements, this looks set to accelerate in the future. ONS data showed 103,000 more people
left the capital in 2018 than moved in, and Narinder Singh Nijjar believes the East Midlands stands to benefit. The co-founder of Leicester-based The
WHILE MANY ARE excited about the opportunities presented by a burgeoning logistics sector – and Alex Reynolds is keen to emphasise how many warehouses feature significant office space – it doesn’t mean we’ll all be getting trams, trains and buses to a big shed just off the M1 in a decade’s time. Air IT chief executive John Whitty believes the
East Midlands also has the right type of skillset for a thriving technology industry – with the costs of running a business in the region up to 17% lower than average in the IT sector. And like many other office-based businesses,
he doesn’t anticipate a permanent return to the days of travelling to fixed workplaces from Monday to Friday. RSM’s Leicester office managing partner Kevin
Harris and Freeths’ Leicester managing partner Mukesh Patel, whose companies employ 5,000 and 1,000 people respectively, say many of their staff want to continue remote working to some degree and expect a hybrid future between the home and office. This could present opportunities for the East Midlands. A House of Commons briefing paper published in July found more than a third of UK businesses are in London (1.1 million) or the
South East (940,000). But Galliford Try’s Neus Garriock identifies an increasing appetite for a hub and spokes model in the UK – “with smaller headquarters that aren’t so much about concentrating bums on seats but projecting an image about the company, and then having the hubs across the regions”. She adds: “With its location and infrastructure,
the East Midlands is in a good position to capitalise on something like this.” Eco-conscious developer Gusto Homes has
built a small co-working space and café into a 160-home sustainable estate in Collingham, near Newark, as founder Steff Wright believes people will want to work near where they live but still have a professional working environment. Alan Cuong Nguyen, an associate at Design
Studio Architects, wants urban designers to respond to the changes in how people work. “Before, we were used to the idea that work is
work, and home is home, but now the work-life balance has changed so much as our home has become our office,” he adds. “This will require a change in policy to think
about how we can improve people’s working environments at home by giving them more green spaces.”
Lettings & Sales Business says: “We noticed this trend about three years ago where people were moving slowly away because they can go into the office on a needs-must basis, which coincided with a really good property boom in the East Midlands over that time. “This brings a different type of clientele
into the Leicestershire market. They have more financial power behind them and can put a bit of a premium on a property so house prices rise.” Narinder and his wife Jaz Kaur also run
Fraser Stretton, which provides a full- service marketing suite for small and medium-sized housing developers, and they are keen to see how the Government intends to streamline the planning process in its proposed reforms. “A recent development we’re working on
in Fleckney took nearly three years from initial planning application to approval,” he says. “This has proved to be a very lengthy and costly exercise, which can prove very challenging to smaller developers. “We need to be careful the Government
is creating a fair playing field when it comes to planning decisions coming through and that the big developers are not monopolising this particular sector.”
business network November 2020 47
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