MORE MUSINGS
 | Simon qualified as a chartered surveyor in 1980. He started his career in the commercial field, moving to private practice in 1983. In the mid-1990s he joined Great Yarmouth Borough Council and in 2006 moved to Waveney District Council (now East Suffolk Council). He retired in 2018. |
Simon continues his recollections and musings, here reliving APC submissions, site surveys and road journeys. |
It has been a long hot summer.
Some of you may have noted that I did not submit an article for the Summer ACES Terrier. I started with every good intention to complete my 25th article but I did not meet the Editor’s deadline – despite knowing it some weeks in advance!!
I started writing these articles some six years ago, when I was making space to allow me to store some papers that I had recently retrieved from my late father’s house prior to selling it after his death.
Perhaps the rest from writing an article did me some good! It enabled me to stand back and decide what to write this time. Those of you who may have read my articles may have noticed that I have referred to subjects on more than one occasion that I have included in earlier articles. In the event, this summer has been different and only now do I seem able to catch my breath and look forward.
A Cornish holiday
Last year I wrote about the opportunity we had to rent my brother’s property in North Cornwall for a two-week period in May. This meant my wife and I could have a holiday with both of our sons and families for separate weeks. My elder son and wife have two children and a dog, and it was great fun to spend time on the same beaches that I went to with my parents and other family members some 60 years ago. The younger son and his wife do not have a family as yet – but they have a dog – and so the second week was spent exploring Cornwall. The proximity of the South West Coastal Path provided an ideal opportunity to tire out the dog and allow me to build up my leg muscles for a sponsored walk for the Alzheimer’s Society on the north Norfolk coast in August.
The route to Cornwall from Norfolk is long and crosses England from east to west. Sixty years ago I would sit down with my father with a road atlas to review the route from Norwich to Cornwall – a list of places with road numbers from east to west. Back then, many of the places did not have any form of bypass and the journey was, inevitably, extended by the need to go through the town and city centres. Now when I go to Cornwall, we bypass many of these places and continue on the never ending motorway routes. It may be a quicker journey, but, perhaps, it does not have the variety and opportunity to visit places on the way.
In the past the preferred route would take us from Norfolk to Cambridge, then cross-country to Oxford. We would then turn in a South Westerly direction to the West Country, going through places such as Bath, Taunton and along the A30 to Exeter. We would then cross Dartmoor and enter Cornwall, eventually arriving on the North Cornish coast.
This year the trip to Cornwall was condensed to the following:
A11 and A14 to Rugby, M6 to Birmingham, M5 to Exeter, and finally Exeter to North Cornwall. We still enter the destination in the Sat nav and there is always the back up of a road atlas!
While we may not have diverted into the various towns and cities, the place names on the road signs did remind me of memories of places that I had visited when I worked at Norwich Union some 45 years ago.
These memories were accentuated when I returned home and found three interesting sets of papers in my cupboard when I was looking for something else. The first was a book titled “The Norwich Union in Real Estate.” I think it was produced to promote the Estates Department for publicity purposes, and while there is no actual date of publication, the introduction confirms that this was produced around 1980. The book is a photographic record of many developments in the Norwich Union property portfolio. The majority of my time at Norwich Union was spent on property management in the South West and it had references to some of the properties I managed.
We stopped at Gloucester Services on the way down, but did not go into Gloucester itself. The NU shopping Centre in King’s Square in the centre of Gloucester was described as “an outstanding example of what can be achieved by a partnership between a local authority and a private developer.” The development comprised a supermarket, 58 shops, restaurant and car park. My role at the time involved carrying out some rent reviews and overseeing some agency work.
I did not remember until I reviewed the second set of papers I found that I used one of these cases at Gloucester as the subject for my Test of Professional Competence [TPC] and I found it next to the NU Book!
It was actually quite humbling reading the text of my TPC. It was written in 1980 and was my second attempt. I did not succeed the first time, and looking at my diary for September 1979, noted my extreme disappointment. I had only two months to resubmit the TPC, which I commented at the time would be difficult.
It became a challenging two months starting again, but with the support of several colleagues I managed to rewrite the whole text from scratch, resubmitting it in the timescale. The comment in my diary suggested that the assessors at the time felt I had set out a valuation based on inappropriate comparables, but all the comparables were local properties that had been let on the open market – which is what the lease required! There was help locally – one fellow surveyor had taken an interest in the TPC and gave me valuable advice. In addition, the local RICS branch had organised a meeting on the TPC in late October, which provided more advice and guidance. I completed the text and delivered it by hand to the RICS Head Office at Great George Street one day before the deadline. I felt more confident the second time, but it was a long four months until I got the result in March 1980.
Forty years on rereading the text, I felt that I had summarised the rent review in a much clearer manner and, perhaps, the assessors were correct the first time! So in March 1980, I heard I had passed and was delighted.
Forty plus years on, my TPC was an interesting read. There is no reference to the actual location or the identity of landlord or tenant. The only reference I have to the location is a copy of my inspection notes and a plan of the accommodation on the original tracing paper!
I suspect that my experience at that time was one of the factors leading to my involvement with the RICS APC, becoming an assessor and chairman in later years.
The third set of papers is a reminder of what was one of my last cases before I left NU in 1983. I was asked if I would go down and measure the unoccupied shops at the Bexleyheath for service charge purposes.
“The Norwich Union in Real Estate” indicated that NU “…..was developing a 7.5-acre site near the clock tower at Bexleyheath Broadway. The company was injecting £31 million into a climate–controlled covered shopping centre to rejuvenate the town centre. It would comprise five major stores and 74 shop units totaling 400,000 square feet of space together with parking for 1,000 vehicles.”
I was issued with a Tenant Handbook which indicated that “the tenant shall pay a service charge” and “……………….the floor area for this purpose will be the gross shell floor area.” My role was to calculate the “gross shell floor area.” I spent four days on site measuring each individual unit and calculated the floor areas, producing a schedule which I imagine formed or contributed to the calculation of the service charge.
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I took some photographs showing the centre in development. In addition to the papers I retained, I was fortunate to be given an off-cut of marble which I used to create a tea pot stand, so I have a permanent reminder of what was one of my last cases for NU.
My elder son had lived in Kent for the last seven years. I always said as Bexleyheath appeared on the road signs that I would make a detour and show him the shopping centre I measured.
However, this never occurred, and my son has moved to Wiltshire. And I completed my 13-mile sponsored walk for the Alzheimer’s Society on the North Norfolk Coast in August!
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