Reading about more senior grey hair leaving the industry means even fewer old heads to advise anyone who cares to listen.

London is not unique, but is a massively powerful world city in a relatively small country, and its effect on local economic activity throughout Britain cannot be under-estimated. More so than any other city, its ability to attract and service the rich is a cash cow for the whole nation.

But successive politicians since 2008 have sought to vilify the wealthy as tax dodgers, spongers and any other epithet that enables them to find new ways to milk them, calculating that votes lost is a worthwhile price for cash.

That strategy has now swung too far – politically and financially: 2016 will be remembered as the year the UK voted to leave the EU, the US voted Donald Trump to be their president and Europe swung right. But economically is where the damage is being done as fewer and fewer people spend money in London.

Received wisdom has always been that soaking rich property owners won’t affect those further down the food chain. But in London this has always been wrong and the effects are now dramatic with focus always on prices and not the thing that counts – volumes.

In a market, and property economy, that has always thrived on volume, politicians need to understand that Londoners move because they want to, not because they need to. Moving to a better postcode is about status: choke off that market and you have a serious effect all the way down, as is now being evidenced.

The Stamp Duty Land Tax pip has been squeezed too hard and when you can rent a nice property for 3-5 years for the equivalent SDLT, why would you buy?

If you ally this to misdirected assaults on landlords and letting agents who provide the backbone of the PRS sector, 14 housing ministers in the last 19 years– none in cabinet – a total lack of clarity and no long-term policy on how to build homes, falling SDLT receipts, falling transactional volumes and a misguided underlying policy that assumes home ownership is the be all and end all, and you can see that if there’s ever been a time for the Government to engage with the estate agency sector it’s now, before it’s too late.

Governments probably realise ours is a disparate industry but we are at the sharp end and need to find a coherent voice – now.

Ed Mead is now a director of outsourced viewing service www.Viewber.co.uk and an independent property consultant / commentator: ed-mead.com