EmailWhen Alison Nimmo was appointed chief executive of the Crown Estate last October, she was on crutches with a broken leg after being knocked down by a cyclist. By the time she took up the job in January, she was fully mended. Now she is doing triathlons – as well as running an organisation that manages more than £8bn of land and property from Regent Street and St James's in London to Windsor Great Park, taking in acres of farmland and the seabed around Britain's shores.
Having finished the Hampton triathlon, the 48-year-old chartered surveyor and town planner is doing another one next month with a lake swim. She is not a big fan of the swimming, though. "It's probably one of the hardest things I've done. Swimming in a lake in a wetsuit [is the part] I'm not quite so sure about; it'll probably be a bit slimy."
Nimmo likes to keep below the radar and was mortified when she ran into a Crown Estate project manager at the last triathlon, as well as her project sponsor from the Olympics where she previously worked. "Suddenly I heard 'Hello Alison' - I thought nobody knows me. So much for going somewhere obscure."The regeneration specialist has also kept a relatively low profile in her professional life. That is despite having rebuilt Manchester town centre after the 1996 IRA bombing, revamped Sheffield town centre and worked on the Olympics.
She played a central role in the London 2012 bid team and then spent five years with the Olympic Delivery Authority. "I've been Mrs Olympics for the last eight years. London's model is a very different model, about creating a new piece of city for east London and at the same time having this fantastic sporting event. However, leveraging the investment from London 2012 into a strategic repositioning of east London is a hard trick to pull off and it's never been done successfully before."
She now finds herself at the helm of an organisation that dates back to 1760, when George III handed over the management of the royal lands to the government, giving up his right to any profits in exchange for an annual income in the civil list. This arrangement was changed last year and the Queen now receives 15% of its annual profits. Nimmo took over from Roger Bright, who over the last decade turned the estate from a gentleman's club into a modern developer-manager. She also sits on the board of Tony Pidgley's developer Berkeley Group as a non-executive director and is a visiting professor at Sheffield Hallam University.
The Crown Estate made a net profit of £240m in the year to 31 March, up 4% on the previous year, its latest annual figures show today. It pays its profits to the Treasury and has contributed £2bn over the last decade. The return on its portfolio was 16.8% last year, easily outperforming the 6.4% industry benchmark.
Nimmo credited the "very tight management of the business". "Voids and arrears [at 2.7%] have been remarkably low given the economic environment." On Regent Street the retail void rate – shops standing empty – is zero. The street is now decked out with flags from the world's nations ready for the Olympics and Burberry is about to open its largest global store there. But the situation is "more challenging" at the firm's retail parks outside London, she admitted. "Nobody is immune from [the financial crisis]," she added, and "this year is more of a year of consolidation and less transactional activity."
She added: "Highlights for the year have been the completion of our Quadrant 3 development [at the bottom of Regent Street] on time and in budget, the launch of our most ambitious development yet in St James's, and reaching the milestone of 1.5% of the UK's electricity being generated by offshore windfarms on seabed we manage." Quadrant 3 is now 70% let or under offer to tenants including UGG, Wholefoods, Jack Space, Telefonica and Al Gore's Generation Investment Management.
However, major challenges include Scottish devolution and recurring criticism that the Crown Estate is neglecting its public responsibilities. Two years ago when the organisation tried to sell four housing estates - home to key workers such as teachers and nurses - in London it had to back down and guarantee low rents in a deal with the Peabody Trust housing association. The Crown Estate has also been accused of overcharging energy companies for use of the seabed.
Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister, wants to wrest power away from the estate, and in March MPs on the House of Commons Scottish affairs committee accused the it of acting like an "absentee landlord or tax collector". The estate holds property in Scotland valued at £220m. Nimmo said: "Scotland is a really important bit of our business and we take criticism wherever it comes from seriously. There are always ways we can improve how we do business."
A fortnight ago the Crown Estate launched local management agreements designed to give more power to communities over their estuaries, foreshore and harbours. It is now working closely with the Scottish government on green energy, not just offshore wind farms but also wave and tidal power, with 36 pilot sites now leased by the Crown Estate, most of which are off the Scottish coast.
"We are a world leader [in offshore renewables] and the trick is to crystallise that position for the benefit of the UK," Nimmo explained. "We're keen to do what we can in terms of using our assets to underpin that growth."
