Are we Ill-Served by Poor Governance? – The Property Chronicle
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Are we Ill-Served by Poor Governance? David Shiers looks at the environmentalist view of property laws

The Professor

In 1977, a then 16-year old William Hague said that his generation wanted the national government to “…get out of the way, not intervene, not interfere in their lives” and hoped that future Prime Ministers would promote a truly free-market economy where those who took the greatest risk received the largest profit. Thirty-four years later, the Prime Minister David Cameron, in a reprise of his colleague’s previous call to arms in the war against perceived unnecessary control and regulation which he referred to as the “…ridiculous burdens on our businesses…” launched his ‘Red Tape Challenge’. As a result, in 2013, legislation which was introduced to help clients and contractors monitor, manage and reduce construction waste more effectively (the Site Waste Management Plans Regulations, 2008), was removed from the statute books.

Most economists would agree that the financial deregulation of the mid-1980s, instigated by the Conservative government and continued by subsequent administrations, was a major factor in the economic crises of the late 1980s, early 1990s and indeed, the crash of 2007-2008. Also and perhaps more significantly, the movement towards more de-regulated, de-nationalised, de-centralised models of government led to legal control being increasingly seen as an unnecessary and expensive irritant which did indeed ‘get in the way’ of individuals and organisations trying to do business. As a result, evidence of a laissez faire attitude to regulation and the decline in propriety and business ethics has been seen in so-called ‘casino’ banking and bonuses being awarded for encouraging high-risk loans, the manipulation of the LIBOR interbank interest rate in 2012, price-fixing by some supermarkets, product manufacturers and airlines, levels of pay of some Chief Executives, the scandal of MPs’ expenses…






The Professor

About David Shiers

David Shiers

Graduating with an MA in Creative Writing in 2021, David Shiers was formerly Reader in Sustainable Property and is now an Affiliate of the School of the Built Environment at Oxford Brookes University. He was co-author (with BRE) of the Green Guide to Specification - an environmental profiling system for construction materials and part of the BREEAM and the Code for Sustainable Homes programmes; helping designers and specifiers to reduce the environmental impacts of their buildings. Globally, there are more than 558,200 BREEAM certified developments and almost 2,260,300 buildings registered for assessment. Green Guide has been the recommended materials specification standard for the UK Government, many Local Authorities and private sector organisations such as the Westfield retail group and was used in the building of the London 2012 Olympics. David was a judge on the Construction News panel for the national UK Building Quality Awards between 2010-2013. His research paper, Socially Responsible Property Investment (SRPI), written with Miles Keeping, Dan Rapson and Claire Roberts, was cited as a key text in United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative report Building Responsible Property Portfolios.

Articles by David Shiers

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