Hi, James, how are you?

 

Yeah, very good, thank you, David. Yeah, all good. 

 

Good. I wanted to ask, firstly, about your role with NLA, as the head of the expert panel on retail and hospitality, particularly vis-à-vis the changing economic circumstances in which we're living. And I was just wondering whether you had a view as to how the energy bills crisis might have an impact on people's spending power and therefore their willingness to use hospitality and retail facilities, but also, perhaps on the businesses at the other end of that equation – the small businesses, the small retail units, the smaller hotels, etc. If you were looking into your crystal ball, given this crisis, what would you see?

 

I think, to put perhaps a little bit more context behind where we are now, retail was struggling pre-pandemic. So, over the last 18 months the retail and hospitality industry has already gone through a series of changes. Retailers had to pivot towards more of an experience-led offering.  The positives that have come out of it is that, actually, there seem to be a lot more entrepreneurs that have come out and created businesses throughout the COVID period - notwithstanding that there is a serious challenge to high streets, and 300 million square foot of retail space is predicted to be vacant by 2030. And now with the looming energy crisis and inflation it is clearly going to put more pressure on small businesses. They are going to need help - the government is going to have to try and help with some form of energy cap for this, and consumers are obviously going to be looking at their spending. And their spending is, through the course of the month, going to be energy, food, water, first, and then anything else outside of that is probably going to be a bonus. But I think the landscape of COVID has actually helped to create a polycentric nature to our towns. People are actually spending because they're working less in the office. They're actually spending a bit more in in their locales, where previously, pre-COVID, people were in the office five days a week and they probably just experienced their local neighbourhood at the weekend. We're actually trying to look at the positives. There's been a renaissance in some of these areas, certainly in London, these London boroughs that are spending a little bit more investment on their local high street. There's an identity aspect to all of this, which we're still in the middle of. We're in the middle of that journey.

 

Yeah. And do you see, as some people do, a prospect of a sort of interim facility? A not-working-from-home facility, but working on one's High Street? I mean, obviously, that could be a coffee bar, couldn't it? But is there a ‘workspace hub’ that you see as a new entrant to the high street over the coming years, where people can get away from the home environment if they wanted…?

 

Absolutely. There's a huge market for it. I think if you look at some of these old retail stores, the department stores, unfortunately, on high streets are probably suffering the most, because there's retail parks and people shop online. So, there's actually a great opportunity for these post-war buildings to be converted into a more democratized space. We have seen a reduction in public space over the last 20-30 years. But actually, some of the work that we've been doing with the NLA and this expert panel that I chair, there's actually more of a focus from boroughs such as Ealing. They're looking at the 20-minute neighbourhood; there's a High Streets Task Force for the government now. In Finchley, they're doing great work looking at what a high street would look like now. Hotels play a good part in this; the ground floor offer, certainly with our experience of hotels, needs to be a public offering. You can't just have it closed off to the public. And also, anecdotally, boroughs like Westminster are looking at giving a 70% reduction in business rates if you offer a community offer. I think a lot of boroughs are certainly looking at incentivizing high streets and how we integrate. It was quite interesting – we had our expert panel chairs’ meeting last Thursday with the NLA of all the others, and healthcare came up. And actually, a really good suggestion was: with everyone centralized to a trust or a hospital, people tend to go to A&E, a lot of the time. Why can't we outsource some scanning facilities into these vacant retail places? And also, education as well - we're looking at that as an economy that's in flux at the moment that's transferring, probably away from a physical aspect to more digital. So actually, why can't we introduce more places for education, further education in the High Street as well? One of the key challenges with all of this is fragmented ownership. How do we create these visions when high streets are owned by so many different swathes of people? But as I said, with Ealing and other boroughs, it's really shone a spotlight on high streets, and actually, our panel in the next year that I'm chairing is actually changing to high streets, and be titled High Streets. I think it's a really challenging environment. But actually, it's one that there's a huge amount of focus on – a lot of eyes are on what do we do with our high streets. Because people live there. And people are asking: how do we change our high streets? So in answer to your question, yes, a lot of spaces are going to have to work harder now to offer this kind of flexible, working environment.

 

Right...!  You mentioned hotels, and I'm drawn to one of your projects that's underway at the moment. This is your Snow Hill scheme in Farringdon for Whitbread, which I think is repurposing an old police station. Could you just briefly tell us a little bit about that, and perhaps some of the issues that that are in that from your work?

 

Sure. It's a fantastic project for us, a project that is highly constrained in relation to its setting but one that we've managed to remodel and repurpose. It is a Grade II listed building with heritage and sustainability at the heart of the scheme. It's a net zero building as well. But one of the key strands to this is the public offer. Naturally, it's a quite an interesting building. It's a Grade II listed building, it's an old police station, so we're actually opening it to the public for the first time. We're retaining a reading room which had become part of the F&B offer. But also, we've worked with the Culture Mile initiative in the City of London. The Culture Mile initiative is set to introduce as much culture into these buildings within this stretch of area within the City to try and attract leisure users. Historically, the city has just been sort of a large business improvement district – the country's largest and Europe's largest. But actually, now we're seeing how we bring people into the City on the weekend bearing in mind, typically, a lot of workers are working Friday and Monday from home. So, we've introduced this gallery, an art gallery space within an atrium, which acts as a really interesting architectural device that connects the old Snow Hill block to our new remodelled block at the rear. And then also, the F&B is open to the public, as well with some interesting heritage features. So yeah, it's very much at the heart of what the City are really looking for. We're looking at other schemes as well that are mimicking this offer.

 

I'm going to do a terrible pun now and say this former Police Station project looks like a very arresting development... 

 

(Laughs)

 

(laughs)

It's a future headline. Okay. Thank you very much for outlining some of your work. It's good to hear that there's some advances being made, and that the retail environment and hospitality environment aren't dead. And neither are our high streets. So, thanks, James, and I look forward to seeing those projects. 

 

Great. Thank you. 

 

Cheers, James.

 

Cheers. Bye!