Property agent hosts roundtable with key professionals and investors

Property agent Fisher German held a roundtable with key property professionals and investors discussing the vast opportunities the city has to offer and the barriers to realising them.

The timely discussion came as 2024 saw the UK welcome a new Labour government with a mandate for growth and a pledge to be the party of wealth creation, and Richard Parker was elected as the new Mayor of the West Midlands.

The key message from the roundtable was: “With Birmingham City Council’s ambitious ‘Our Future City Plan’ firmly in place, outlining a vision to establish Birmingham as a world leader in sustainable living and working by 2045, England’s second city is undoubtedly a great place to invest in.

“But as the city attracts this unprecedented level of investment and development, a clear strategy is required to ensure that the public and private sector have a joined up, collaborative approach so that these bold plans to take the city to the next level can come to fruition.”

There are a number of sectors already attracting long-term capital investors in Birmingham, including life sciences, medtech and digital, and with several world-leading universities based within the city, the opportunities in these areas are only set to expand.

Compared to areas such as the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, Birmingham is less expensive to set up a business, has cheaper living costs and benefits from strong connectivity, with a wider supply chain right on its doorstep.

HS2 is also acting as a significant catalyst for growth in the area, and the scale of the city’s younger demographic also means it has a strong chance of attracting good-quality new housing.

One of the main barriers identified was public funding of essential real estate dependent services, and Birmingham City Council, like countless other local authorities across the country, is suffering from reduced government funding.

It is Europe’s largest local authority district, and while its two principal sources of income are council tax and business rates, social care accounts for a significant proportion of its overall budget.

This has ultimately resulted in a planning department whose capacity is stretched, and in order to ensure that the limited resources are focused on those schemes with more financial and social impact, a great focus on strategic priorities and attribution of performance from individual developments needs to be adopted.

Delays have a real cost for investors/developers, and such costs will only adversely impact on the commercial viability of schemes.

Property investors with collectively billions of pounds to invest wait for years for schemes to receive consent, and the city council suffers as a result of the delayed investment and therefore deferred much-needed business rates and council tax revenues.

These delays coupled with complex new building regulations, can often leave schemes commercially unviable.

Government cuts have also left the city in need of funding for the vital infrastructure to make its ambitious future plans possible – something which cannot be fixed by the private sector.