Good morning.
Ministers are drawing up plans to extend the moratorium on landlords’ ability to evict tenants(£) over unpaid rent. But early indications suggest that it might not apply to retailers…
(There are still some signs of business-as-usual, however. Schroders and Legal & General have signed up Frasers Group to 40,000 sq ft at their shopping centre in Bracknell.)
But what will happen to all the empty shops, asks The FT (£).
Schools will start to reopen from 8 March. The thawing of restrictions has led to a flurry of other rumours: Non-essential shops could reopen the week after the Easter bank holiday, pubs and restaurants could reopen in April, for outdoor service only. Then again, they might not.
Self-catering breaks(£) over Easter could also be allowed under proposals being reviewed by ministers.
Although, it seems many Airbnb owners have been blithely ignoring restrictions and have been letting out their properties anyway.
Shops and restaurants could reopen to those who have been inoculated, under plans for a roll out of “vaccine passports”(£).
While firms could use them to welcome staff back to the office(£).
Which could be just as well, as WFH might not be all its cracked up to be(£).
WeWork, meanwhile, is offering its UK tenants greater flexibility(£) in an attempt to woo them back.
The prime minister’s closest adviser – Eddie Lister – has remained on the payroll of Stanhope and Delancy(£) during his time at Downing Street. He is now off to the Gulf.
And property developers who used dangerous cladding in their schemes gave millions in donations(£) to the Conservative Party.
London will continue to suffer as tourists stay away, Shaftesbury’s boss(£) has warned.
A reform of planning bureaucracy as part of a Northern Big Bang is being urged to repay the north of England(£) for backing Brexit and Boris.
About 100,000 people who agreed to buy a home last year could miss the stamp duty holiday(£) because they are unlikely to complete in time.
Meanwhile, the chancellor is facing calls to scrap stamp duty entirely and replace it with a “fairer” property tax.
Demand for detached houses boomed during the lockdowns, driving up prices three times faster than for flats.
Developers are increasingly including communal vegetable patches(£) in plans to appeal to punters and appease planning departments.
Two plucky parish councils have launched a battle(£) against their local lord’s castle.
The ability to deliver groceries ten minutes after they have been ordered will be the next logistics battleground, The Times (£) predicts.
Japanese developer Unizo(£) is under pressure from a creditor to file for bankruptcy protection.
The FT (£) takes a closer look at Amazon’s HQ2 – you know, the one that looks like a… spiral.
The Guardian looks at which of London’s bridges are falling down.
And plans for Boris’s bridge over the Irish Sea may have collapsed, but there is still hope for a tunnel!
And, in case you missed it, you can listen to the second episode of EG’s new weekly podcast, EG Like Sunday Morning. Expect resi, offices and Weetabix.
And because we know you can’t wait to fill your ears with more delicious sounds from EG, here’s a little taste of what’s coming up this week.
And finally, three years ago Jeff Fairburn made a promise. On Valentine’s Day 2018 the then Persimmon boss got down on one knee (figuratively) and vowed to donate a “substantial proportion” of his £82m bonus to charity. What a generous chap! Sadly, Jeff was fired just a few months later for bringing the developer into bad odour, but a promise is a promise. He had not made a donation yet, he said last year, because he was looking into establishing a charitable trust. Since then, though, it appears that he hasn’t set anything up, hasn’t sought advice about setting anything up and hasn’t, seemingly, donated so much as a brass farthing. Well, they do say charity begins at home.
