PLA announces new President

At the Annual PLA Dinner held on 10 November 2016 Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury gave a wonderful speech and announced that he is stepping down as our President with effect from 31 December 2016. He received a standing ovation for his services to the PLA which have lasted almost as long as he has been a judge.

New President

It has been a very hard job finding a replacement for Lord Neuberger but we are delighted to announce that the PLA’s new President with effect from 1 January 2017 will be Liz Peace.

Liz is a well-known figure in the property industry, having served as Chief Executive of the British Property Federation for thirteen years until her retirement at the end of 2014. During that time, she managed to change the Government’s perception of the commercial property industry, to establish it as a key voice in policy debate, to dissuade the Government from legislating on commercial leases, to win innumerable changes to planning and tax legislation and, working as part of a pan-industry alliance, to persuade the Government to introduce real estate investment trusts (REITs). Previously, she was a civil servant in the MOD, eventually becoming a key player in the team that created QinetiQ plc.

Liz now holds a range of non-executive, advisory and charity roles, including at Morgan Sindall plc, Redrow plc, Howard de Walden Estates, Holtby Turner, Arcadis, Peabody and the Churches Conservation Trust, and the Architectural Heritage Fund. She is the chairman of LandAid, the property industry’s principal charity. She is also chairing the shadow board for the Curzon Urban Regeneration Company in Birmingham and has recently been appointed to chair the embryonic organisation that is being set up under the Government’s New Property Model initiative to asset-manage departmental property portfolios.