Industry influencers
Published: 14 November, 2011
Over the past 20 years a range of industry bodies have sprung up to serve the shopping centre industry. Sean Kelly lists the lobbyists.
It was the last day of retail property organisation BCSC’s conference taking place in Manchester in November 2002 when John Richards, then chief executive of Hammerson and the in-coming president of the organisation, dropped by the BCSC Press Office. To a select few he introduced himself and then shared his intentions for his forthcoming presidential year.
“There are two things to bear in mind” he said to the BCSC press team back then. “First, the organisation is going to grow. Secondly, with the backing of the BCSC board, we are going to add structure and appoint a chief executive to steer that growth.”
And so it was. By October 2003 the BCSC board had chosen retailer-turned-town-centre consultant Michael Green as the organisation’s first chief executive. Green proved an inspirational choice. From a conference that attracted just 1,400 people in 2002, the organisation grew its membership to 2,500, and its conference programme to 3,300 participants and took it to new locations (including what would become the largest-ever conference, held in Belfast in 2005).
Moreover, with the support of the board, BCSC’s Green initiated a programme of engagement with Government designed to take its “retail led regeneration” ethos to the highest levels in the land.
A decade on, Richards believes BCSC should rightly feel justified in its decision.
“I think the British Property Federation was arguably the role model for the BCSC board when it took the decision to ‘professionalise the management’ and appoint a full time chief executive and dedicated support staff,” he says.
Since 1991, when Shopping Centre launched, a host of organisations have either evolved or arrived on the scene to represent various strands of the property and retail and retail property industry.
For most of them, the development of best practice and exchange of ideas between mutually-interested members and the evolution of their knowledge base is the primary function. For others acting as the voice of their members and lobbying takes equal, if not primary, priority.
“One of the key reasons for individual participants in the real estate firmament to support professionally organised representative bodies is not only to aggregate the weight of their ‘voice’ but also to remove the obvious self-interest element,” says Richards, who has since gone on to retire from Hammerson and also serve as president of the British Property Federation in 2010.
Richards believes that a cross-industry consensus approach should matter to organisations because it matters to government.
“Government interest is in what is impacting industry,” he says. “It is far less interested in what’s impacting individual companies. For organisations that do lobby an aggregated voice that presents a cohesive picture of the challenges the industry is facing and, also, a unified voice to counter competing arguments, is critical.
And crucially that ‘voice’ should not simply be directed at Government Ministers complaining about current legislation/policy/taxes but perhaps more importantly to the civil servants who will be writing the briefing papers and drafting future legislation to help them achieve their objectives while avoiding unintended adverse consequences.
The Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM) also celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
ATCM chief executive Martin Blackwell says that organisations face an ever-changing and challenging commercial and legislative environment.
“David Cameron, launching the Mary Portas High Street Review said, ‘The high street should be at the heart of every local community’ and that is what we have been working towards for two decades,” Blackwell says.
“Almost 90 per cent of the UK population live and work in towns and cities and nearly everyone depends on them for access to shopping, entertainment, leisure, culture, public services and transport. They also generate up to 80 per cent of the nation’s wealth creation, and act as a focal points for government and public administration, hubs of regional infrastructure and natural locations for trade and commerce – it is therefore difficult to overstate their importance.
“In a very real sense, they are everyone’s neighbourhood and their active management is central to the prosperity and well-being of the whole of society.”
“I think the property industry is definitely doing better than it was 20 years ago,” says Richards, who is now a senior advisor to the $7bn+ US distressed debt fund Värde and looking to exploit real estate based opportunities across Europe.
“In the first instance you now see high-quality permanent staff at more organisations which are headed up by a top-quality CEO. The benefit of that is that successive presidents can help harness the skills of the committee and use them to turbo charge the business but not at the cost of losing sight of the big and important issues that require continuity. Secondly, those professional staff have an understanding of how to work with other organisations for joined – up thinking where there is common cause and purpose.”
