The boss of one of Leicester biggest employers says free parking, a better planning system and creating more family housing could help breath live back into the city centre post-Covid 19.
As Leicester stays locked in the tail end of an extended local lockdown, Ian Mattioli, chief executive of Mattioli Woods, said the big changes ahead would be part of the cycle of inner city life that has defined Leicester for decades.
He believes the city – and businesses like his own – will adapt, but said added support is needed to get the ball rolling.
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And councils should, he said, be allowed to borrow extra cash to help with that.
Leicester City Council said they had done well to deal with planning applications during the lockdown.
Mr Mattioli's wealth management company has a new office with capacity for 600 at the bottom of Leicester’s New Walk.
Pre-lockdown it had around 400 people working there, and post-lockdown he expects that figure to be around 250-300, with some staff continuing to work from home.
Nationally his company has 600 employees and offices across the 海角视频.
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Mr Mattioli said: “We have to get a lot of people back into our office because otherwise the economy nationally and locally will start to creek.
“There’s only one coffee shop open around us at the moment. We overlook New Walk and there are only a few people walking along it.
“A lot of people have found working from home revolutionary. We are using Teams, Zoom and social media.
“We took very quick action. I would like to see the councils take quick action. In Leicester it’s just re-introduced car parking levies for on-street parking – it should get rid of them.
“Bring people in. Speak to the owners of the car parks. Open them up, get people back into the cities.
“Don’t hang around with planning permission. I’ve spoken to a lot of developers who say “the council is shut, we can’t get anything agreed”.
“You’ve got to lead from the front. Civic responsibility and business responsibility have got to work arm in arm to really get things back.
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“Councils can create the funding for projects that might take a while to be achieved, but parking is an easy one.”
On the issue of shops and restaurants not reopening, he said: “Change happens. Buildings can be reused. We designed our new building to be multi-functional. Our ground floor is 2ft higher than the other floors just in case we needed to put shops in.
“There are a lot of great buildings in Leicester that could be converted to family accommodation. Let’s get behind that. Probably what we don’t need at the moment is more restaurants and more shops because they are going to suffer for a year or two.
“But the space in and around Leicester is still really valuable, cosmopolitan, inclusive and all the things that historically made Leicester a great place to be.”
Mr Mattioli said the business had operated well through the lockdown with new tech brought in just before the pandemic allowing the team to work remotely.
The business also put a hold on bonuses, the executive took a salary cut and he decided to forgo his own salary.
The business also avoided using Government money he said, while at the same time investing in new senior management members.
Acquisitions have continued and Mr Mattioli said would continue.
It comes as new figures show revenues for the business rose by 1.6 per cent to £58.4 million in the year to May 31, with pre-tax profits up more than a third to £13.4 million, “significantly ahead of expectations at start of the year”.
Assets under management dropped marginally to £9.3 billion.
He said: “Life is very different. I think Covid-19 took us a little bit off-balance as you would expect.
“But we have worked really hard to ensure that whilst we are off-balance we are still very much on-purpose.
“If you look at some of the things we have done locally in lockdown we have taken on the best part of a dozen new people through our recruitment programmes to deliver long-term consultants and long-term administrators.
“We have continued to grow our tech team.
“We have invested a lot of money in our infrastructure, not just buildings, going from old style servers and changing our operating system in July/August last year, and in light of what happened that was absolutely the best thing to do.
“As we went into lockdown we closed the offices and the following morning we were operational from people’s homes.
“There was no rationale as to why we wouldn’t continue to grow because one thing the pandemic has brought about is individuals asking questions of their own financial positions – “what have we got? How sustainable is it? Is there enough?”.
“All of these things help and drive out business forward.”
A Leicester City Council spokesman said: “Our planning department is definitely open for business and has continued to operate throughout the pandemic, dealing with more than 400 planning applications over the past five months, despite most staff working from home and with more limited IT capacity.
"The volume of applications dealt with on time compares well to previous years.
“The team has set up virtual planning committee meetings and will shortly begin citywide consultation on the Draft Local Plan.
“Levels of application submissions are close to pre-pandemic levels and staff are working hard to service these and to continue supporting the encouraging levels of development interest in the city.”