“Hey Google, how do we get more built world experience into the corridors of power?”

In idler moments I sometimes imagine how different things might be if someone with built world experience were to take on one of the most important and influential jobs in the UK.

Might housing delivery be improved if there was an experienced real assets investor at the heart of government? Would place strategies be better shaped if there were an architect on the policy team? Or, away from Westminster, might landlords get a more sympathetic hearing if those who shape popular culture included more engineers, surveyors and developers?

Well, we might be about get a chance to test it.

A former president of Google's Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, and an experienced media executive before that, it’s easy to see why Matt Brittin has been appointed as the new director general of the BBC.
He is an experienced operator in the corridors of power, understands content and delivery, and has a background in elite sport. He also has very much more direct experience of this sector than any of his peers or predecessors.

I interviewed Brittin some time ago (for Estates Gazette in, gulp, 2013) and his appreciation of the power of place and place narrative was already apparent. 

Brittin saw King’s Cross’s rail past and present as a “metaphor for the new industrial revolution of the internet and the connections that are created”. (This was 2013, remember.) He also recognised the power of a great building  in recruiting the best people: “We want our premises to be inspiring,” he told me. “How often do you go into an office building and your soul drains away when you see cubicle after cubicle and grey walls and little personalisation?”

And perhaps drawing on what he learnt in his first job as a chartered surveyor at Connell Wilson he had some advice for landlords: “Rather than saying ‘we need to trap you into a 25-year lease’, think about how you can be a landlord that adds value to my business through flexibility, understanding my needs and being able to move fast.”

So how might the new DG apply his experience – which didn’t stop in 2013 btw; it was only four years ago that Google bought its Central St Giles campus on his watch? I have a few suggestions.

How about a drama where a developer is hero rather than villain?

Or, in news, more infrastructure stories that talk investment first rather than just cost?

Or, in current affairs, an occasional tilt towards supporters of a planning application rather than opponents?

Perhaps less frivolously, how about lending support to the NLA call to government to designate the built environment a priority growth sector in the industrial strategy, supported by a 10-year plan to attract investment, create sustainable jobs and deliver growth?

All of the above will soon see the light of day, I hope, but any one of them would be a great start.