John Keyes, Senior Director and Head of DTZ’s Manchester comments:
“This was the last Autumn Statement before the General Election. We are in danger of announcement “fatigue” but the real need now is delivery.
On a positive note, the government and wider public sector is developing a long overdue focus on the related themes of promoting economic and housing growth and of delivering reform in public services.
There remain very real challenges. Economic recovery is not yet supporting strong and consistent occupier demand in many parts of the country beyond London, the South East and the major regional city centres. Outside London, the housing market has not yet achieved pre-recession levels of activity and not enough houses are being built or sold.
There are major challenges to reform the health sector and this will require significant investment in hospital buildings but more particularly in primary health properties and in the community care sector. Local authorities need to lead local public service reform, including much more shared use of property with local partners.
Delivery is the real challenge and there is a real worry that the public sector has lost the experience and expertise to drive forward the necessary transformations at the pace required.”
