Lincoln Grand Prix organiser says Brexit to blame if event doesn't go ahead this year

Lukas wrote:

In other news thank heavens the UK govt has withdrawn from the awful, EUSSR Erasmus scheme. How dare the EU think they can subsidise 'our students' to go and study in some EU university. 

The vote the other day doesn't mean that the UK will withdraw from the Erasmus scheme. At least not yet.

WeLoveHills wrote:

Lukas wrote:

Thank you for your informative post. However brexthick and facts are not compatible.
In other news thank heavens the UK govt has withdrawn from the awful, EUSSR Erasmus scheme. How dare the EU think they can subsidise 'our students' to go and study in some EU university. 

The vote the other day doesn't mean that the UK will withdraw from the Erasmus scheme. At least not yet.

Loves 'facts' does our Lukas.

Lukas wrote:

brexthick

Bang! Lyrical blow to the jaw!

dave_t wrote:

Don't blame it on sunshine. Don't blame it on moonlight. Don't blame it on good times. Blame it on the Brexit.

Everyone will blame everything for the next 20 years on Brexit, good or bad.

vonhelmet wrote:

dave_t wrote:

Don't blame it on sunshine. Don't blame it on moonlight. Don't blame it on good times. Blame it on the Brexit.

Everyone will blame everything for the next 20 years on Brexit, good or bad.

"Good"? From Brexit??  

MrGhostrider wrote:

Persimmon homes and other housebuilders paying millions in bonuses; Governemnet susidies, easy planning permissions, house builders have never had it so good. Brexit ? Maybe not.

Nonetheless, housebuilding figures have been in steady decline over the last nine months, and are now at their lowest level since 2010.

Compared to developing major infrastructure, housebuilding is a relatively quick process. But it still takes quite some time to do all of the studies, put in an application, get permission and then build a development - three to five years is fairly common. Despite this relatively quick turnaround on developments, it seems that housebuilders are now also being affected by low investor confidence. This could be due to a general expectation that house prices will drop post Brexit; if you work on that prediction, then buying buildings, land etc. to redevelop now when it might be cheaper in a few months doesn't seem like a very good move.  Of course, the opposite could happen and land prices may increase, but I've not seen any forecasts which expect that to occur. 

Even so, the situation with housbuilding is much better than major infrastructure. I'm in the planning/environment sector and have spent the last 3-4 years working on one planning application for nationally significant development. So far the plannning process has taken at least 10 years, and cost the client around £2.5 billion (including land purchase). We are still to find out whether the project can go ahead - the Government was supposed to make a decision around Q3 of last year, but it was so preocupied with Brexit that it has kicked it into the long grass (along with decisions on quite a few other major projects) and has justified the delay by asking for clarifications on some rather inane points. So while there has been planning reform, most notably with Cameron/Osborne tearing up the rule book in 2012, it has (in my opinion) led to another problem - without the guidlines of old which set out a reasonable middle ground, there is now significant divergance between the aspirations that local authorities/regularors have for developments, and what developers interpret the current planning framework to require. This is causing friction, making the passage of applications through the process rather bumpy, and is generating lots of work for planning lawers.  Not quite the 'easy planning permission' that you mention (although I agree that change of use and small residential developments are somewhat easier). 

With construction generally taking a very long time to recover the capital costs of development, investors are generally looking for stablility and certainty. Indeed, a 2014 publication by the Government aimed at promoting infrastructure developoment in the UK made a great deal of noise about the UK offering "A stable risk and return profile" and "Certainty for a number of years for investment". I think the bonfire of the planning guidance which has left investors uncertain what consessions exactly will be required to get consent for a project, and secondly the effects of Brexit on the economy, have been major contributors to the rest of the world investing almost 30 billion less in UK infrastructre in 2018 than they did the year before. The ONS figures for 2019 are not yet out, but I would be very suprised if they showed any improvement over 2018, and from the recent Markit PMI figures I think that external investment in 2019 will be even worse than 2019. [https://www.markiteconomics.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/1035eb4711b54f2...

Sorry for such a long post, but it is pretty clear that Brexit has had a demonstrable negative effect on most aspects of the construction industry, to the tune of about £30 billion per year (and possibly more). The Government has promissed swathes of new infrastructure (HS2, hospitals etc.) to cushion the effect of Brexit, but it should be noted that they are borrowing the money to fund this, which is quite different from having the money flow into the UK from overseas investors.

McVittees wrote:

Despite being a remainer, I can see a swathe of people and groups blaming Brexit for anything that doesn't  go their way.  It's an easy target.

As a remainer, let's hope so.