Industry Insight
Journey to the north shore Commercial property roadmap in 2022 James Routledge Head of National Commercial Property Investment Matthews & Goodman
T
he government’s long-awaited ‘Levelling Up’ white paper was published earlier this month. It had promised to outline a clear route map for regional investment and economic stimulation. The theory behind the plan is that local economies will be stimulated as large organisations move away from London to less economically vibrant areas, and so become a catalyst for economic activity, innovation, talent attraction, and rainmaking for the countless service and product suppliers these behemoths need to function – from advisers to sandwich makers.
Part of the strategy involves moving 22,000 civil service jobs out of London and the South East by the end of the decade. The government has already announced that by 2025 the Home Office will move 30% of its workforce to metropolitan cities such as Sheffield, Cardiff, and Belfast as well as towns like Salford, Solihull and Stoke-on Trent (home of a new Innovation Centre) by 2025. Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) plans to move to Belfast, Edinburgh and Preston creating 1,350 new jobs – an increase of almost 60% of roles outside London. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will become the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It will establish new 38 | NACFB
headquarters in Wolverhampton. HM Treasury and other government departments have announced their intention to create a new economic campus in Darlington. The concept of government and business moving out of the capital and moving ‘up country’ is known as ‘north shoring’. Not only does it save money, the spread of work benefits communities in the north of the UK. It is good news then that north shoring is not limited to the public sector. PwC opened its largest UK regional office in Birmingham and Goldman Sachs announced that the city would host its new regional hub. BT joined this march to Birmingham announcing its intention to create 1,000 new jobs in the city. The decision of Channel 4 to locate its new head office in Leeds is acting as a tremendous catalyst for the creative sector in the region. Still in the north, Manchester boasts the country’s fourth largest digital
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Forecasters believe that in 2022, commercial property capital values will increase by around 2.9% (total return 7.4%)
