Peter Bill on property: Colette O’Shea writes a new chapter for LandSecs

Rob Noel, Chris Grigg and Toby Courtauld are in line for multi-million-pound bonuses.

How much the chief executives of Land Securities, British Land and Great Portland will pocket becomes clear only in July when the annual reports from three of Britain’s biggest property companies are published.

Yesterday, Grigg produced an 8.4% profit rise to £297 million at British Land. Next Wednesday, Courtauld will reveal even better numbers for Great Portland. Today, Land Securities unveiled a 9.9% increase in earnings to £320 million on a portfolio up 7% in value to £11.9 billion. Sales of £700 million reduced debt to 32.5% of the stock owned by Britain’s biggest property firm.

There’s a sign of caution from Noel, who says “any new development will require pre-lets”. That still leaves two million square feet of space costing £700 million for London managing director Colette O’Shea, 46, to finish by 2016. The overseer of a gigantic cleared site north of Victoria station is in Birmingham today. Newly installed as president of the British Council for Offices, she is presiding over a conference that brings together design and construction experts. Many are keen to know what’s behind that gentle smile.

Former LandSecs chief executive Francis Salway, who gave her the job in 2003, says: “We immediately recognised that we had somebody of special talent. Every time Colette was given a new project or wider responsibilities, she was just so effective.” O’Shea studied agriculture and comes from rural Essex. Now she hails from urban Victoria, having just moved in from Lewisham. “I knew I wanted to be in land or farming,” she says.

In December, she was promoted to oversee designers and builders constructing two million feet of offices on LandSecs land in Victoria and the City. Some summoned to meetings at LandSecs headquarters in The Strand find her a bit scary. “She can be very feisty,” said one. “Well, yes, I might be, a bit,” confesses O’Shea, whose surname comes from her Donegal father, and, whose first name has prompted her into reading a biography of French novelist Colette, author of Gigi.

“I don’t like long meetings, or people who go on too long. I used to sit in meetings like that and have to stay silent. But now I get to chair meetings. I rather like that. You have to get people in and out as fast as you can. I dislike inefficiency.” You have been warned.

Grand tour for Clark to kick ministries into play

Greg Clark is a gent. Name another minister who would rush from the terrace at the Palace of Westminster to return with a fistful of paper towels to wipe the rain-spattered seats before settling down for a 30-minute chat.

The 46-year-old MP for Tunbridge Wells is Minister for Cities. He talks affably of a planned coach trip around Britain’s capital, a tour that may result in less-than-affable chats with fellow ministers about kicking their departments into freeing up public land to meet London’s housing crisis.

“The tour has been arranged by Rick Blakeway,” says Clark, naming Boris Johnson’s chief housing adviser. “I’ll be coming along with [Cabinet Office Minister] Francis Maude. They want to show us the public land held by various ministries, sites they think could and should be used for housing. I don’t know exactly what we’ll be looking at but the purpose of the day is for us to come back and bang heads together.”

At a guess, heads will be banged hardest at the Departments of Health and Defence.

Figures released today by EGi: London Residential Research highlight the crisis. The annual red-bound survey of every development site in London shows that although the number of homes being built has risen by 66%, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of homes built for the less well-off. Affordable-home completions fell 29% between 2012 and 2013, from 10,700 to 7500.

Johnson’s more relaxed view on the semi-mandatory 40% target imposed by his predecessor Ken Livingstone will surely be blamed.