Category: Topical commentary

By Lucian Smithers, Director of Sales and Marketing, Pocket

At Pocket we have all read ‘The Triumph of the City’ by Ed Glaeser. Glaeser’s views about what makes cities great and how they can remain successful give heavyweight academic substance to Pocket’s belief in delivering starter homes for London’s city makers – you could even say we’re groupies.

So you can imagine our excitement at the prospect of hearing him talk in the UK last month at Warwick Business school’s outpost in the Shard.  He was also interviewed in the Guardian, and even better, he popped in to visit Pocket and hear more about our philosophy and business model – we think he liked it!

Glaeser’s work focuses on the power of successful cities. Note the word “successful.” His studies cover huge geographical and historical distances to find the lessons about how great cities have managed to thrive and in some cases come back from the brink.  And his visit to London meant he gave some thought to the similarities, and differences, between the UK and our friends across the Atlantic.  He pulls out the simplest observations from a huge set of data and experiences, and here are some of the nuggets of genius that we took away for London: Read More

Last year, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) produced a very useful report into housing in London, ‘Getting our house in order’.  The report aimed to build a ‘business case’ for the creation of more homes in the Capital, noting the urgent need for more homes at all levels in London, and urging Government (national, regional and local) to work together to deliver more homes for London’s workforce.

This week LCCI has published a follow-up paper, ‘Unlocking London’s Housing Potential’, focusing on one of the main recommendations in their original report – the release of public land for housing. Public land release is especially important for the development of affordable housing yet, as Pocket is quoted as saying in the report, it can take up to four times longer to acquire land and planning on public sector sites in London than private acquisitions.  This can be crippling for a small developer like Pocket.

Housing for the people who make London tick

More needs to be done to support the development of housing in London, especially housing that is specifically designed for the crucial workforce that keeps the city ticking. The report highlights that ‘51% of London firms believe the lack of housing… was the issue having the most impact on their business…’.  London needs the right kind of housing in the right locations in order to keep these talented and valuable people living in, and contributing to, their communities.  We have been banging this drum since Pocket started building affordable homes, so it’s great to have more voices added to this call. Read More

At Pocket, we’re proud to be a business that straddles the public and private sectors.  This is a pretty unusual position for a property developer, but for a property developer that focuses solely on the intermediate market, it’s an obvious position to take.  It means we work a lot with Local Authorities, and we talk to lots of private institutions about collaborating on projects and to raise money.  But one institution we hadn’t spoken to before last week, was the British Monarchy.  It hadn’t really occurred to us, despite the interest that certain members have traditionally shown in the built environment.

So when we were contacted by the office of HRH Princess Anne, we weren’t quite sure what to expect.  HRH is President of CSCLeaders, a global leadership programme for 100 exceptional senior leaders, selected each year from government, business and NGOs across the 53 countries of the Commonwealth.  This year’s challenge for the participants is ‘What makes a city smart?’; we talked to 10 delegates about Pocket’s role in delivering intermediate housing for London, and especially about how we bring together the public and private sectors to do so.

HRH Princess Anne joined us for part of the presentation, and stayed behind afterwards to hear more about Pocket’s specific projects and future plans.  She was a very engaged guest with well-informed views, and it was a pleasure to introduce her to Pocket.  As well as feeling honoured to have been selected by CSCLeaders to participate this year, we were also pretty thrilled to have such a distinguished guest, and enjoyed watching her discrete cavalcade slip in and out of Floral St – blink and you would have missed it!

This week saw over 2,000 people from Housing groups across the country converge on Parliament square and we went along to show Pocket’s support.  The objective was surprisingly simple – don’t let the housing crisis drop down the political agenda.

In the process of every general election, a range of issues start to shape the debate around the campaigns of the main parties but by the end, it’s the big beasts of Health, Education and Welfare that tend to dominate. So on Tuesday, housing associations, developers, architects, planners, social landlords and many more all came together to ensure that this doesn’t happen. The aim was to get senior politicians from all the major parties to commit to ending the housing crisis in a generation and delivering a comprehensive long term plan for housing within one year of taking office. And all credit to the organisers, they managed to get senior parliamentarians from all the major parties (and Nigel Farage) to commit to this aim. Read More