08 October 2012, With apologies to Mary Poppins, Will Mooney, Carter Jonas partner and joint head of its commercial agency and professional services in the eastern region, is not in the party mood this conference season.
The mainstream political parties are in conference mode but these events are not, in modern times, the kind of seaside shindigs of old. Metropolitan locations of Birmingham and Manchester are preferred to Blackpool these days with just the Liberal Democrats sticking to the seaside tradition in Brighton this year.
But that’s not to say there isn’t breeze enough in these cities to encourage as much kite-flying on the policy front in the coming month as in the past one.
There’s been the great hope that the country’s fortunes can be revived by up to 8 metres worth of building extensions. Capitalising on the fervour of our victorious summer of Jub-Olympics, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s the patriotic duty of every householder and landlord of a small business unit to build on this success.
This is an offer for a limited period only and to no more than 25 ft or so, and as long as the property’s not in a conservation area or the owner of a listed property and other caveats which include not annoying neighbours.
Unfortunately, this kite is now being firmly tethered by local authorities who, although of the same political hue as central government, just don’t want to play that particular game.
You have to wonder whether this policy won’t go the same way as that plan to sell off the country’s publicly owned woodlands. If you remember that from last year. I had to be prompted myself.
Then we had another dusting down of the proposal for a British Business Bank (BBB). Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, advised that it would be a bank for ‘gazelles’ – those young, agile companies who were fleet of foot (or hoof) and would be looking for ‘patient lending’ over a 20 year period.
News of the BBB was received quite coldly by hardnosed financial commentators, not least because it was announced on the very same day that the Public Accounts Committee aired the failure of the Regional Growth Fund.
Launched by the Deputy Prime Minister in September 2010, with a target of making 36,800 jobs through a fund of £1.4 billion to ‘real’ companies, two years on from its launch, just £60 million of the Fund had been taken up by companies with less than one in fifteen of the jobs target reached so far (2,400 jobs).
Aside from ‘events, dear boy’, it’s all about timing in politics.
For on the same day (11 September), I attended the official launch of the Cambridge & Counties Bank (CCBank) - which is owned by Trinity Hall, one of the oldest of the Cambridge colleges, and Cambridgeshire County Council’s pension fund -and on whose attributes I’ve commented on before.
At the risk of sounding like an A level question, BBB and CCBank: compare and contrast. There wasn’t a national politician in sight at the CCBank launch, thanks to the Cabinet re-shuffle the previous week which saw both the former and the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury unable to fulfil the gig commitment made previously.
What there was, encouragingly, was the reaffirmation by the CCBank that it recognised that business finance is a long game. As a start-up business itself, it’s geared-up to lending for up to that same patience period of 20 years that the BBB would do.
Mingling with the great and the good of Cambridge - and beyond - at the CCBank launch, I sensed that is the very model of a modern business bank and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Business Secretary who’d floated his BBB proposal that very morning.
Will Mooney MRICS
Partner
Commercial, Cambridge
The mainstream political parties are in conference mode but these events are not, in modern times, the kind of seaside shindigs of old. Metropolitan locations of Birmingham and Manchester are preferred to Blackpool these days with just the Liberal Democrats sticking to the seaside tradition in Brighton this year.
But that’s not to say there isn’t breeze enough in these cities to encourage as much kite-flying on the policy front in the coming month as in the past one.
There’s been the great hope that the country’s fortunes can be revived by up to 8 metres worth of building extensions. Capitalising on the fervour of our victorious summer of Jub-Olympics, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s the patriotic duty of every householder and landlord of a small business unit to build on this success.
This is an offer for a limited period only and to no more than 25 ft or so, and as long as the property’s not in a conservation area or the owner of a listed property and other caveats which include not annoying neighbours.
Unfortunately, this kite is now being firmly tethered by local authorities who, although of the same political hue as central government, just don’t want to play that particular game.
You have to wonder whether this policy won’t go the same way as that plan to sell off the country’s publicly owned woodlands. If you remember that from last year. I had to be prompted myself.
Then we had another dusting down of the proposal for a British Business Bank (BBB). Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, advised that it would be a bank for ‘gazelles’ – those young, agile companies who were fleet of foot (or hoof) and would be looking for ‘patient lending’ over a 20 year period.
News of the BBB was received quite coldly by hardnosed financial commentators, not least because it was announced on the very same day that the Public Accounts Committee aired the failure of the Regional Growth Fund.
Launched by the Deputy Prime Minister in September 2010, with a target of making 36,800 jobs through a fund of £1.4 billion to ‘real’ companies, two years on from its launch, just £60 million of the Fund had been taken up by companies with less than one in fifteen of the jobs target reached so far (2,400 jobs).
Aside from ‘events, dear boy’, it’s all about timing in politics.
For on the same day (11 September), I attended the official launch of the Cambridge & Counties Bank (CCBank) - which is owned by Trinity Hall, one of the oldest of the Cambridge colleges, and Cambridgeshire County Council’s pension fund -and on whose attributes I’ve commented on before.
At the risk of sounding like an A level question, BBB and CCBank: compare and contrast. There wasn’t a national politician in sight at the CCBank launch, thanks to the Cabinet re-shuffle the previous week which saw both the former and the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury unable to fulfil the gig commitment made previously.
What there was, encouragingly, was the reaffirmation by the CCBank that it recognised that business finance is a long game. As a start-up business itself, it’s geared-up to lending for up to that same patience period of 20 years that the BBB would do.
Mingling with the great and the good of Cambridge - and beyond - at the CCBank launch, I sensed that is the very model of a modern business bank and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Business Secretary who’d floated his BBB proposal that very morning.
Will Mooney MRICS
Partner
Commercial, Cambridge
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