2021 Business Predictions: Paul Morris, Development Director of St James Securities

It’s that time of year, when Business Link Magazine invites the region’s business leaders to provide up their predictions for that year ahead. 

It has become something of a tradition, given that we’ve been carrying this out now for over 30 years.

Here we talk to Paul Morris, Development Director of St James Securities.

With 2021 now firmly behind us and the roll-out of the Covid vaccine underway across the UK, many reasons exist to look forward with confidence to an economic recovery from the second quarter of 2021 onwards.

Although the retail sector was in freefall before Covid hit, the pandemic has sadly hastened its demise. The initial situation that Covid-19 has created has presented a distinctive opportunity to reshape our city centres and revitalise the high street.

There is a desperate need to bring residents and commerce back into our city centres. However, no progress is going to be made unless central and native government works in partnership with the non-public sector. This will require an injection of public money and other intervention, such as CPOs and land acquisition etc.

As we come out the other side of the pandemic our focus will have to shift. We will continue to begin to see the growth of ‘beds’ and ‘sheds’, with more housing by means of the growing Buy to book sector and an increase in industrial accommodation to deal with the unstoppable increase in online sales.

St James Securities’ new £200m Becketwell regeneration scheme in Derby is the perfect example of a transformational scheme which will kick-start the regeneration of a massively neglected area of a city centre and support its economic recovery.

Our vision is to encourage people back into Derby city centre to live, work, shop and spend their free time. The new public square would be the beating heart of this scheme, which will enable hundreds of people to reside in high-quality homes in the city centre.

The real jewel within the crown of the Becketwell scheme, however, is really a new 3,500 capacity performance venue.

Alongside this we are providing office accommodation for start-ups to larger occupiers.