1. Chamberlink May 1-26.qxp_Chamberlink 29/04/2021 09:29 Page 20
Business News
The Griffin Report The Colmore district in the centre of Birmingham represents the heart of the city’s professional sector. Estate agent Nicola Fleet-Milne is chair of the Colmore Business Improvement District and Chamberlink columnist Jon Griffin, spoke to Nicola about how the diverse area of business will fare in the recovery from the Covid-19 lockdowns.
irmingham city centre’s professional services sector has ‘pivoted’ and adapted to survive the biggest global health emergency for 100 years – clearing the path for a ‘new version' of the 21st Century workplace.
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Sampling “Summer in the Square”: Nicola Fleet-Milne in Victoria Square 20 CHAMBERLINK May 2021
The resilience of some of Birmingham’s most prominent offices in the teeth of the Covid-19 pandemic – from multi-national accountancy firms to solicitors and marketing companies – was revealed by Nicola Fleet-Milne, chair of the Colmore Business Improvement District (BID). With around 500 organisations employing 35,000 people occupying 5.6 million square feet of office space, Nicola and the rest of the BID team oversee the heart of the city’s professional sector, which generates hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the regional economy. And the woman whose own £1m turnover estate agency lies at the
centre of the district in Colmore Row is full of praise for the efforts of firms, big and small, to battle through more than 12 months of stop-start lockdown.
‘Professional services have had the resources and technology to survive’ The owner of FleetMilne Property gave an upbeat assessment of the future prospects for Birmingham city centre’s best known professional sector – but warned of the impact of workloads on office-bound staff forced to
operate remotely over the past year. She told Chamberlink: “Professional services have had the resources and technology to survive. Had this happened 20 years ago, it would have looked very different. Thankfully, the technology has allowed so many people to work remotely. “In some cases, firms may well have increased their staff numbers because they have had an increase in work. A prime example is the property market which has not slowed, so requests for conveyancing have increased. And sadly, insolvency firms have had more work coming in over the past 12 months.
