Third world
AN OFFER I can refuse reaches me from Sir James Whitaker, chairman of a new company called London's Third City PLC. This grandly named concern will invest in houses and flats in the East End of London, in Docklands, and seeks to raise £5 million — of which the management will put up as much as £112,000. The property would be let out, on assured tenancies, thus qualifying investors for tax relief under the Business Expansion Scheme. Tenants, it is implied, would flock to work in the development at Canary Wharf. Glossy photographs of this are supported by glossier artists' impressions and a map indicating that by 1995 or '96 (still the official dates) Canary Wharf will be con- nected to the underground railway. The management will have no trouble in buying properties, and indeed its immediate risk is of being trampled to death in a rush to sell. Nowhere else is so thickly coated with speculative housing and conversions, run up for the beneficiaries of the boom which was to follow Big Bang in the City — but never did. Some have been on offer at half-price mortgages (not quite what they seem), some house the tenants of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, some have gone bust — like Kentish Homes. Sir James ought to know about Kentish. It went down owing £10 million to the Hali- fax Building Society, out of its depth in the docks. Sir James is vice chairman of the Halifax.
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