A time bomb

Brexit is a never ending story, with many twists and turns; as well as a hand grenade waiting to go off at some stage.

We’ve had highs and lows since the referendum was called, the pound is zig zagging on the exchanges, the stock market is sensitive to any announcements. We’ve had doom and gloom reports, as well as others predicting resilience. We’ve had UK and Euro politicians posturing in advance of meaningful negotiations, and a media happy to seize on the good, bad and untruths to sell newspapers.

Its left swathes of the UK population wanting a mix of independence, distraught, disillusioned or joyful. At best, confused. And having had one referendum where lies, damn lies and few statistics ruled the airwaves, we now are in a muddle whether we want soft or hard Brexit. No wonder there are calls for a second referendum.

CPT Events Conference discussion

I had a conference discussion the Tuesday after the referendum, and we concluded that the immediate aftermath of the vote was nothing was going to change. We still have our jobs, clients are still demanding, the rules and best practice demands in our jobs remain. EU directives remained, as did the national legislation empowering them.

Impact on Planning

We have all sorts of EU Directives affecting our industry, as a non lawyer I wont list them, but they are all remain. Incoming legislation and implementation dates all remain, It really is as if nothing has changed.

Lets just think of one area - procurement rules are unpopular, when might they change?

No-one has suggested they should change. No announcements have been made as of yet.

We have a Brexit minister, and the civil service are establishing a Brexit department, but do they have an office, are they staffed up? Once they are up and running, they will be focused on what they seek – soft or hard Brexit, then they have to decide when to exercise Article 50. Then the negotiations start and will run for 2 years. Perhaps we shall have other civil servants focused on negotiating on trade deals, and others on repealing the 1972 EEC Act.

I doubt any will be reviewing 40 years of legislation to weed out what EU law we want to discard or alter. You will have industries leaders and professions doing that and lobbying government, but the civil service is not known for haste and with limited resources, the mandarins will probably take a quote from Yes Prime Minister that Rome wasn’t built in a day. I predict it will be 5 years from triggering Article 50 that we will begin to see cherry picking of repeals.

So the rules remain the same for the foreseeable future. Maybe we should sow the seeds for our new future (making money, delivering schemes and building communities) whilst we can, because there will be plenty of uncertainty and more twists and turns before we get somewhere. 

Author: Mark Barlow, Managing Director, CPT Events 

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