26 April 2016 | Herpreet Kaur Grewal National student accommodation management company Homes for Students has been appointed to manage four new schemes totalling 917 beds.   The company was chosen by UK real estate investment manager Lothbury Investment Management Limited on behalf of the Lothbury Property Trust, which owns the accommodation in Aberdeen, St Andrews, Durham and London.   These schemes are being developed by student accommodation developer Alumno.   The four sites are: East Shore Student Halls, a 135-bed scheme in St Andrews, which became operational in 2015; Powis Place, a new 196-bed property in Aberdeen and the Town Hall Camberwell, a 168-bed development in London, which both come on board in 2016; and a new 418-bed scheme at Sheraton Park in Durham, which will become operational next year.   Under the terms of the deal, which is valued at £1.5 million per year once all sites are operational, Homes for Students will provide services including a booking and marketing platform, sales teams, rent collection and financial management, tenancy management, helpdesk and reception, full facilities management, life cycle and asset management and energy management.   Martin Corbett, managing director of Homes for Students, said: “Our fixed-price, long-term expenditure wrap is designed to protect investors’ interests, which combined with our expertise to market and let the accommodation and to manage the property assets professionally, was particularly attractive to Lothbury.”   Source link

Confidence remains low among UK landlords as a result of recent government interventions in the buy to let market but buyers are slowly returning to the market, says a new survey. Overall, landlords report improved buying intentions, growth in tenant demand and yields and confidence is stable but remains at subdued levels, according to the research by BDRC Continental on behalf of Paragon Mortgages. Following an increase in the rate of stamp duty payable on buy to let purchases, and with a staged reduction in income tax relief available on rental income due start next year, landlord confidence remained low in the first quarter of 2016. Asked about expected business in the next three months, just 41% of landlords rated their prospects as being either ‘good’ or ‘very good’. This is down from 65% during the same period last year, prior to the government’s clampdown on buy to let. Indicating that falling levels of confidence may have stabilised however, the figure is just 2% down on the fourth quarter of 2015. Reflecting this, the survey also saw landlords’ property purchase intentions edge above selling intentions, reversing the situation seen in the final quarter of 2015 when more landlords were looking to sell property than were looking to buy. Some 19% of landlords indicated that they intend to purchase a property in the coming year, up from 17% in the fourth quarter of 2015 while 16% of landlords indicated that they intend to sell a property, down from 19% in the previous quarter. Driving this trend was an increase in tenant demand, with 39% of landlords reporting demand as increasing either slightly or significantly, up from 34% in the fourth quarter of 2015. Reflecting this increase, landlords reporting tenant demand as being stable declined from 40% to 36%. The research also shows that yields in the first quarter of2016 also grew slightly on the previous quarter, averaging 5.7%. Despite negativity persisting around business expectations over the short term, rental property as an asset class is still viewed favourably by landlords. Some 38% of landlords polled believe investing in the PRS to be ‘much better’ than other investment options such as stocks and shares. A further 33% believe investing in the PRS to be a ‘little better’ than other investments and just 10% believe an investment in the PRS is worse than other investments. ‘Increased stamp duty, as well as reduced levels of income tax relief for landlords due to come into force next April, have undoubtedly impacted landlord sentiment. Confidence by some measures is down by around a third when compared to the same period last year. That said, this data does suggest that confidence is stabilising,’ said John Heron, director of mortgages at Paragon. ‘In the previous quarter we saw more landlords respond very negatively to the announcements on stamp duty and tax on rental income with more intending to sell rather than buy property, this trend is now reversed and purchase… Source link

©iStock Hinkley Point A, right, is one of the UK’s decommissioned ‘Magnox’ reactors Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority “manipulated” and “fudged” a tender process for a £7bn contract to clean up the country’s nuclear power plants, the High Court has ruled. The judgment, handed down on Friday, raises fresh questions over the way government entities hand out multibillion-pound contracts and casts further doubt on the UK’s nuclear industry a day after the government’s decision to launch a review of the £18bn Hinkley Point project. It could eventually cost the government hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. More On this topic IN UK Politics & Policy The NDA said it was considering its legal options after the ruling, which found that it had wrongly awarded one of the government’s largest contracts to Babcock, the UK engineering company, and Texas-based Fluor. The claim was filed by Energy Solutions, the US-based company that lost the contract after managing the nuclear sites for 14 years. Energy Solutions, which bid for the contract in a consortium with Bechtel but took legal action against the NDA alone, said it would press for “significant payment . . . for the damages caused by the NDA’s incorrect decision”. It has previously signalled it would seek up to £200m in damages. Justice Peter Fraser found that, had the NDA’s own evaluation rules been correctly applied, Babcock and Fluor would have been disqualified from the tender process, adding that the authority made “many manifest errors” in reviewing the Energy Solutions’ bid. The court found that the NDA had “manipulated” the valuation process in order to avoid disqualifying the Babcock-Fluor bid. “In my judgment the NDA sought to avoid the consequence of disqualification by fudging the evaluation,” Justice Fraser wrote in his ruling. He found that the NDA “fell short” in meeting its obligations of “transparency and equal judgment”. The NDA sought to avoid the consequence of disqualification [of Babcock-Fluor] by fudging the evaluation – Justice Peter Fraser The NDA argued that it had conducted the tender correctly and it would have been “disproportionate” to exclude a bid for failures it considered “trivial” or which had “no real impact”. The NDA made a last-ditch bid to have the claim thrown out of court over the disclosure that witnesses for Energy Solutions were to receive substantial bonus payments in the event of a court win. However, the judge rejected the claim, saying the bonus payments did not affect the findings. The contract involves the clean-up of 12 of the UK’s 25 nuclear sites, including the Sizewell, Hinkley and Dungeness “Magnox” nuclear power stations built in the 1960s which have reached the end of their lives. The government is facing increasing scrutiny over its procurement process following the referral of G4S and Serco to the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging on electronic tagging contracts for offenders, and the West Coast main line rail franchising debacle two years ago. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link