News - Midlands
Leicestershire review
One of the nicest ways to come into Leicester for the first time is to leave your car near Victoria Park to the south of the city and walk down New Walk. This tree-lined pedestrian walkway, which will take you right into the city centre, is exactly the kind of green channel that urban planners in other cities around the UK are desperately trying to foist onto their city centres. Given that New Walk dates back to the start of the nineteenth century, you might think Leicester is a city that is way ahead of its time.
Sadly, that would probably not be the conclusion you would come to if you were to arrive by rail, come out of the Victorian railway station, and immediately be confronted by a noisy dual carriageway ring road of the kind Birmingham's planners wisely sought to downgrade over a decade ago.
The large stock of tired looking 1960s buildings you would see when you eventually found your way to the other side, and the relative absence of anything more up-to-date - within the city centre anyway - would also leave you with the idea that Leicester is lagging behind in development, especially compared with other conurbations nearby.
Many of the city's business people and advisers (as you can see from the round table discussion accompanying this article) say the same, at least until very recently, has been the case with the city's economy and image of itself.
"I think certain parts of Leicester's economy are doing well," says David Hills, senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, "like transport, construction, and of course retail. But manufacturing, for example, is certainly not growing as fast as you would expect. I think we are also recognising that there is a dearth of good quality office space in the city centre, and we are not making enough of our science and technology links, despite the recent Mars mission being largely run out of Leicester."
Mike Higgins, at Fusion Corporate Finance based in Leicester, thinks, along with many others, that the city has for too long been eclipsed by the success of other Midlands cities - Nottingham in particular. "It has been in the shadows, but it is coming out," he says.
Like many others in the professional services community in the city he thinks change is being spearheaded mainly by public sector organisations. "The organisation that is really pulling this forward is the East Midlands Development Agency," he says. "Its initiatives are really putting Leicester at the front."
Others, like Mike Siddall, commercial director for Leicestershire at the Royal Bank of Scotland, see the city benefiting from the drive and focus of the Leicester Regeneration Company (LRC).
"Approaching the second anniversary of its master plan," says Siddall, "the city is beginning to see tangible benefits as the development of cultural and office quarters really begins to take shape."
Indeed it is. Earlier this autumn no less a person than Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and a local MP to boot, helped start demolition work at the site of the proposed Science Park, a development that's designed to help the world-class science the city's two universities are researching spin out into the wider economic community. The masterplan notes that part of the reason why this hasn't happened so far is a lack of suitable office space, so 450,000 sq ft are to be built at Abbey Meadows, a site adjacent to the National Space Centre, as well as housing on that site and on nearby Wolsey Island. But that is only one of five different projects the master plan is focusing on.
LRC chief executive John Nicholls is particularly excited about developments at the old police station in Charles Street in the city centre, now being vacated by the boys in blue.
"We are going through the second stage of bids from potential developers of this site at the moment," he says. "We should have a developer selected, from ten who have expressed an interest, by Christmas. We are aiming for 100,000 sq ft of office space, as well as two dozen apartments, and 5,000 sq ft of A3 use."
Being close to the station, and with Leicester being the first significant city coming out of London on the Midland Mainline route, Nicholls is particularly hopeful that the site will be selected for central government office relocation, as outlined in the Lyons review. Leicester has missed out on such relocations in the past, so that could be an item in its favour, but Nicholls is adamant that the city will not just win such a major coup through default. "King Sturge recently appraised every town in provincial England with a population of over 100,000 as a possible destination for central government relocation," he says, "and Leicester was the only city to come in the top quartile for all six factors they considered."
The Police Station redevelopment is part of a larger plan for a New Business Quarter centred around the station (and making use of its Victorian building again) that would also see that great barrier of a ring road realigned. A funding application for this is being made as part of the July 2005 Local Transport Plan.
But it's not all offices, of course. Leicester is the home city of a number of countrywide retailers - Next and Goldsmiths, to name a few - and the master plan hopes that by improving its retail property offering, and extending the Shires shopping centre in particular, it will attract one retailer that has so far not chosen to locate there - John Lewis.
As Insider was going to press, developer Hammerson had secured outline planning consent for the shopping centre extension, with a spokesman for the council saying there were just minor highway and listed building issues to be resolved. John Lewis is keen to become anchor tenant of the new extension too - although it wants to see a number of improvements to the public realm, such as a pedestrianisation of the High Street, if it is to commit.
There's work to be done on the riverside too. Like many cities, Leicester has tended to ignore its river frontage in recent years (quite ironic when you consider how prominently the relatively unknown River Soar is signposted out on the M1).
"The waterside really has been neglected," says Nicholls, "and when you think of the potent focus a river has been for regeneration in other cities, that really is incredible. The Soar as it goes through Leicester is a canalised river too, with the canal and the river joining up and splitting again. So in places there is a quadruple riverfront. But so far the only place that has been developed is Bede Island, part of the old City Challenge project."
Given that the Bede Island North project, which has seen a vast area of former scrap yards turned into prestigious offices, has just won an award from the East Midlands Property Forum (and our own East Midlands Property Dinner - see page 43) the signs are encouraging that further riverside development will be looked on approvingly. Barratts is building a new housing development on the south part of the island, and the LRC itself is shortly to be putting a development framework for the area out to public consultation.
Another project that has seen work start this autumn is the Peepul Centre. Not, as you might think, a trendy way of spelling 'People', but the name of a species of tree found in India. The centre aims to be a strongly woman-focused community centre in the city's strongly Asian suburb of Belgrave. "This is a multi-million pound project," says Nicholls, "and the fact that it has got to this stage with almost entirely voluntary backing is a tremendous achievement."
But is the city still the focus of all development in the county? Leicestershire is, of course, well served by motorways. Hills claims 80 per cent of the UK is within a four hour drive of the county. These journey times could shortly be improved with a planned £31bn widening of the M1 between junction 21 and junction 30.
Not surprisingly then, the county has become something of a focus for the distribution industry - but not so much in the city itself, more in the North West Leicestershire district where the M1, M6, M69, A6 and A50 all converge. It has seen the bulk of new business park development at Bardon near junction 22 north of Coalville.
"International companies are choosing to site here," says Richard Brewin, a partner in the Ashby office of Smith Cooper, a Midlands-based accountancy firm. "American companies in particular like to site their European headquarters here. They like the speed of coming through Birmingham airport, rather than Heathrow."
He says the Ashby region is also benefiting from people moving out from the West Midlands conurbation. But others point to Loughborough and Market Harborough too as strong focuses of development in the county. "Loughborough once again has a strong university focus - no longer just in sport," says Hills. "And its transport links have been greatly improved by the extension of the A6 northern relief road. Market Harborough has built itself around its links to London, and its residential housing development is perhaps strongest in the county outside Leicester itself."
But Higgins is not alone in saying Leicester itself still is and still should be the focus of the county's economy. "I would agree Loughborough has seen a lot of growth thanks to its education links," he says. "But the major business spend is still in Leicester."
Such spending is, in the long run, looking healthier. Leicester Shire Promotions, a city-county partnership geared towards attracting inward investment, says it helped create 591 new jobs and safeguard 1,500 more last year. That's a 13 per cent rise on the year before w
Banking on increased activity
In professional services, Leicester does seem to be picking up after a relatively lean period.
Bank of Scotland has opened its second office in the city in the award-winning Bede Island Business Park, moving in 10 staff working with large corporates across the region.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), too, has made two new appointments to its business development team in the city headed by John Bryant.
Mike Siddall, Leicestershire director for commercial banking at RBS, says: "We have recently completed two management buyouts in the last month for long-established Leicester companies and the pipeline for the remainder of the year looks strong and positive. Deals are longer in gestation than they were a couple of years ago, but we are pleased with the level of activity currently within the city's professional activity."
The bank that carries the city's name in its brand title, meanwhile, has a more ambitious challenge underway.
Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank (A & L), rebranded from Girobank 12 months ago, is aiming to use Leicester as a pilot area for a new attempt to challenge the dominance of the four high street banks.
Stuart Wilson, regional manager for the bank's central region, says it wasn't just the historic links with the city that made the bank choose Leicester.
"Leicester obviously made a lot of sense as we felt if we couldn't do it here, we couldn't do it anywhere," he says. "But the city has a very diverse business community which we felt we could grow into."
Of course, because of its Girobank background, the bank's business customers can already access their accounts through any of the country's 16,000 post offices, as well as by phone and on the internet.
Customers in the pilot region, however, will also have access to a personalised, dedicated account management service, and most importantly, a named contact at the bank who should always be able to deal with their enquiries.
"We have to be realistic about the size of the other banks," says Wilson. "We are not deluding ourselves that we are going to capture a significant part of their market share quickly. But we can offer local people a local level of service. We have a high street presence but there is also a small feel about us."
Again, because of its background, the bank is well served to attract the kind of small and relatively unsophisticated business that would feel more at home in such an environment. The bank claims to handle almost £31 in every £34 spent on UK high streets. It also claims to have cash depositing facilities located within a mile of 95 per cent of all UK businesses.
This sense of pride in Leicester businesses managing things their own way is reflected in one of the winners of this year's Leicester Business Awards. At the turn of this century engineering company Alstec was part of Alstom, a multinational, but was losing money heavily and faced an uncertain future as a result.
But a management buyout in 2000 saw the company focus more keenly on what it was doing, become more customer facing, and rapidly turn around back into the black.
Technical director Philip Green says the company owes its survival to the resilience of its workforce. "One option would have been to move," he said. "But we have a core of skilled people here, and it made sense to stay in well connected part of the world. We are now developing in a positive way."
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subscribe to Insider
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Sadly, that would probably not be the conclusion you would come to if you were to arrive by rail, come out of the Victorian railway station, and immediately be confronted by a noisy dual carriageway ring road of the kind Birmingham's planners wisely sought to downgrade over a decade ago.
The large stock of tired looking 1960s buildings you would see when you eventually found your way to the other side, and the relative absence of anything more up-to-date - within the city centre anyway - would also leave you with the idea that Leicester is lagging behind in development, especially compared with other conurbations nearby.
Many of the city's business people and advisers (as you can see from the round table discussion accompanying this article) say the same, at least until very recently, has been the case with the city's economy and image of itself.
"I think certain parts of Leicester's economy are doing well," says David Hills, senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, "like transport, construction, and of course retail. But manufacturing, for example, is certainly not growing as fast as you would expect. I think we are also recognising that there is a dearth of good quality office space in the city centre, and we are not making enough of our science and technology links, despite the recent Mars mission being largely run out of Leicester."
Mike Higgins, at Fusion Corporate Finance based in Leicester, thinks, along with many others, that the city has for too long been eclipsed by the success of other Midlands cities - Nottingham in particular. "It has been in the shadows, but it is coming out," he says.
Like many others in the professional services community in the city he thinks change is being spearheaded mainly by public sector organisations. "The organisation that is really pulling this forward is the East Midlands Development Agency," he says. "Its initiatives are really putting Leicester at the front."
Others, like Mike Siddall, commercial director for Leicestershire at the Royal Bank of Scotland, see the city benefiting from the drive and focus of the Leicester Regeneration Company (LRC).
"Approaching the second anniversary of its master plan," says Siddall, "the city is beginning to see tangible benefits as the development of cultural and office quarters really begins to take shape."
Indeed it is. Earlier this autumn no less a person than Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and a local MP to boot, helped start demolition work at the site of the proposed Science Park, a development that's designed to help the world-class science the city's two universities are researching spin out into the wider economic community. The masterplan notes that part of the reason why this hasn't happened so far is a lack of suitable office space, so 450,000 sq ft are to be built at Abbey Meadows, a site adjacent to the National Space Centre, as well as housing on that site and on nearby Wolsey Island. But that is only one of five different projects the master plan is focusing on.
LRC chief executive John Nicholls is particularly excited about developments at the old police station in Charles Street in the city centre, now being vacated by the boys in blue.
"We are going through the second stage of bids from potential developers of this site at the moment," he says. "We should have a developer selected, from ten who have expressed an interest, by Christmas. We are aiming for 100,000 sq ft of office space, as well as two dozen apartments, and 5,000 sq ft of A3 use."
Being close to the station, and with Leicester being the first significant city coming out of London on the Midland Mainline route, Nicholls is particularly hopeful that the site will be selected for central government office relocation, as outlined in the Lyons review. Leicester has missed out on such relocations in the past, so that could be an item in its favour, but Nicholls is adamant that the city will not just win such a major coup through default. "King Sturge recently appraised every town in provincial England with a population of over 100,000 as a possible destination for central government relocation," he says, "and Leicester was the only city to come in the top quartile for all six factors they considered."
The Police Station redevelopment is part of a larger plan for a New Business Quarter centred around the station (and making use of its Victorian building again) that would also see that great barrier of a ring road realigned. A funding application for this is being made as part of the July 2005 Local Transport Plan.
But it's not all offices, of course. Leicester is the home city of a number of countrywide retailers - Next and Goldsmiths, to name a few - and the master plan hopes that by improving its retail property offering, and extending the Shires shopping centre in particular, it will attract one retailer that has so far not chosen to locate there - John Lewis.
As Insider was going to press, developer Hammerson had secured outline planning consent for the shopping centre extension, with a spokesman for the council saying there were just minor highway and listed building issues to be resolved. John Lewis is keen to become anchor tenant of the new extension too - although it wants to see a number of improvements to the public realm, such as a pedestrianisation of the High Street, if it is to commit.
There's work to be done on the riverside too. Like many cities, Leicester has tended to ignore its river frontage in recent years (quite ironic when you consider how prominently the relatively unknown River Soar is signposted out on the M1).
"The waterside really has been neglected," says Nicholls, "and when you think of the potent focus a river has been for regeneration in other cities, that really is incredible. The Soar as it goes through Leicester is a canalised river too, with the canal and the river joining up and splitting again. So in places there is a quadruple riverfront. But so far the only place that has been developed is Bede Island, part of the old City Challenge project."
Given that the Bede Island North project, which has seen a vast area of former scrap yards turned into prestigious offices, has just won an award from the East Midlands Property Forum (and our own East Midlands Property Dinner - see page 43) the signs are encouraging that further riverside development will be looked on approvingly. Barratts is building a new housing development on the south part of the island, and the LRC itself is shortly to be putting a development framework for the area out to public consultation.
Another project that has seen work start this autumn is the Peepul Centre. Not, as you might think, a trendy way of spelling 'People', but the name of a species of tree found in India. The centre aims to be a strongly woman-focused community centre in the city's strongly Asian suburb of Belgrave. "This is a multi-million pound project," says Nicholls, "and the fact that it has got to this stage with almost entirely voluntary backing is a tremendous achievement."
But is the city still the focus of all development in the county? Leicestershire is, of course, well served by motorways. Hills claims 80 per cent of the UK is within a four hour drive of the county. These journey times could shortly be improved with a planned £31bn widening of the M1 between junction 21 and junction 30.
Not surprisingly then, the county has become something of a focus for the distribution industry - but not so much in the city itself, more in the North West Leicestershire district where the M1, M6, M69, A6 and A50 all converge. It has seen the bulk of new business park development at Bardon near junction 22 north of Coalville.
"International companies are choosing to site here," says Richard Brewin, a partner in the Ashby office of Smith Cooper, a Midlands-based accountancy firm. "American companies in particular like to site their European headquarters here. They like the speed of coming through Birmingham airport, rather than Heathrow."
He says the Ashby region is also benefiting from people moving out from the West Midlands conurbation. But others point to Loughborough and Market Harborough too as strong focuses of development in the county. "Loughborough once again has a strong university focus - no longer just in sport," says Hills. "And its transport links have been greatly improved by the extension of the A6 northern relief road. Market Harborough has built itself around its links to London, and its residential housing development is perhaps strongest in the county outside Leicester itself."
But Higgins is not alone in saying Leicester itself still is and still should be the focus of the county's economy. "I would agree Loughborough has seen a lot of growth thanks to its education links," he says. "But the major business spend is still in Leicester."
Such spending is, in the long run, looking healthier. Leicester Shire Promotions, a city-county partnership geared towards attracting inward investment, says it helped create 591 new jobs and safeguard 1,500 more last year. That's a 13 per cent rise on the year before w
Banking on increased activity
In professional services, Leicester does seem to be picking up after a relatively lean period.
Bank of Scotland has opened its second office in the city in the award-winning Bede Island Business Park, moving in 10 staff working with large corporates across the region.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), too, has made two new appointments to its business development team in the city headed by John Bryant.
Mike Siddall, Leicestershire director for commercial banking at RBS, says: "We have recently completed two management buyouts in the last month for long-established Leicester companies and the pipeline for the remainder of the year looks strong and positive. Deals are longer in gestation than they were a couple of years ago, but we are pleased with the level of activity currently within the city's professional activity."
The bank that carries the city's name in its brand title, meanwhile, has a more ambitious challenge underway.
Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank (A & L), rebranded from Girobank 12 months ago, is aiming to use Leicester as a pilot area for a new attempt to challenge the dominance of the four high street banks.
Stuart Wilson, regional manager for the bank's central region, says it wasn't just the historic links with the city that made the bank choose Leicester.
"Leicester obviously made a lot of sense as we felt if we couldn't do it here, we couldn't do it anywhere," he says. "But the city has a very diverse business community which we felt we could grow into."
Of course, because of its Girobank background, the bank's business customers can already access their accounts through any of the country's 16,000 post offices, as well as by phone and on the internet.
Customers in the pilot region, however, will also have access to a personalised, dedicated account management service, and most importantly, a named contact at the bank who should always be able to deal with their enquiries.
"We have to be realistic about the size of the other banks," says Wilson. "We are not deluding ourselves that we are going to capture a significant part of their market share quickly. But we can offer local people a local level of service. We have a high street presence but there is also a small feel about us."
Again, because of its background, the bank is well served to attract the kind of small and relatively unsophisticated business that would feel more at home in such an environment. The bank claims to handle almost £31 in every £34 spent on UK high streets. It also claims to have cash depositing facilities located within a mile of 95 per cent of all UK businesses.
This sense of pride in Leicester businesses managing things their own way is reflected in one of the winners of this year's Leicester Business Awards. At the turn of this century engineering company Alstec was part of Alstom, a multinational, but was losing money heavily and faced an uncertain future as a result.
But a management buyout in 2000 saw the company focus more keenly on what it was doing, become more customer facing, and rapidly turn around back into the black.
Technical director Philip Green says the company owes its survival to the resilience of its workforce. "One option would have been to move," he said. "But we have a core of skilled people here, and it made sense to stay in well connected part of the world. We are now developing in a positive way."
For the fuller picture,
subscribe to Insider
every month.