Good morning. Put the kettle on and clear the cobwebs with this look at the morning’s property news.
Galliard has said that it is willing to spend £100m for the last lots of the Nine Elms development, dismissing claims that the scheme was oversupplied.
Save the date! The Chancellor Sajid Javid has finally been able to set a date for his Budget(£), opting for March 11. The theme is likely to be “The Decade of Renewal” and the focus will be £80bn of investment, largely for struggling towns. Dress code, formal.
Northern Ireland will be hoping for some of that largess, but its commercial property investment is already 19% higher than last year. Still 4% down on the ten-year average, though.
Meanwhile the £18bn Crossrail could open in late 2021 – 3 years behind schedule – according to “pessimistic” new timescales(£). The last “pessimistic” predictions from Crossrail had it opening in 2018 at a cost of £15bn.
Less pessimistic predictions from the service sector, which has hit the crucial 50 mark(£) on the catchily named IHS Markit / CIPS PMI(£), meaning expectations of plenty. Sort of.
Aldi is certainly not pessimistic after its sales hit £1bn over the Christmas period(£), fueled by the nation’s unquenchable thirst for prosecco and need for pigs in blankets. Rivals Tesco, Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons(£) will let us know how their Christmasses went later this week…
Another retailer is also celebrating bumper Christmas sales, with Mountain Warehouse(£) scaling new heights and feeling on top of the world.
But there is bad news for Jamie’s Italian creditors, not least Jamie himself, as the failed chain swallows up £80m of their money(£)…
… And The Times (£) has good think piece on CVAs and zombie retailers.
Meanwhile, part of London Capital & Finance’s web of minibond companies that swallowed up £237m has been struck off(£).
In Leeds, planning permission has been given to McLaren Property’s 330,000 sqft Wellington Street development – the city’s largest ever office building…
… And in Birmingham, Bruntwood SciTech has submitted plans for a £30m extension of its Innovation Birmingham campus – including roof garden!
And in Romania, plans for an £11m rescue of the iconic Constanta Casino have been green lit(£), which will hopefully stop the art nouveau masterpiece from crumbling into the Black Sea.
While in the Lake District the locals are up in arm about plans to “desecrate” Wordsworth Country(£) by allowing houseboats on Grasmere.
The UK’s energy supply may have been more green than ever last year, but there is still more to be done. In America’s Pacific Northwest one city is going to prove its green credentials by trying to ban gas heating for all homes…
… Which is straight out of the ‘What Would Greta Thunberg Do’ playbook, unlike Prince Charles’ plans to get other wealthy people to help fight climate change by flying by private jet to Davos. It’s ok, though, he was already flying to Israel anyway…
And finally, communities in East Ayrshire are not so much going green as going pastel pink. A scheme in the former mining town of Bellsbank(£) to paint the greying council houses with bright and cheery colours has proved so successful that it will now be pushed out across the region. See you, Jimmy? You certainly will.
