Research has been carried out that shows consumers are moving away from the traditional, offline, high street estate agents. LetBritain has carried out a survey on a nationally representative sample of 2,000 UK adults. The research published has shown that there has been a mass consumer exodus from the more
The architectural practice, Stephen George + Partners have announced that their Birmingham office will be relocated to larger premises. The architectural firm will be moving their offices to Longbridge Technology Park after a search for larger premises. Stephen George + Partners have recently carried out a localised merger with the
The first residents on Shakespeare Road on The Poet’s in Swindon have been given the keys to their new homes. Neighbours that have lived next to each other for over 30 years in some cases are now gradually being allowed to move into their brand new homes on The Poets.
tado° launches Professional range at PHEX Published: 05 October, 2016 Today at PHEX, tado° announced its new dedicated product range for installers – tado° Professional. tado° Professional is a portfolio of smart heating products, including the Smart Thermostat and Smart Radiator Thermostats, that enables installers to provide remote boiler maintenance
Brexit vote gives boost to North East homes North East house prices have enjoyed a Brexit boost, performing strongly in the run-up to and aftermath of the referendum over the UK’s EU membership. Research from North East sales and lettings firm KIS reveals property prices in the region rose 4.8%
©Getty Back to work: the Colombo Port City Project was temporarily suspended in 2015 Over the past two decades, China’s construction companies have built more infrastructure more quickly than ever before. Now, spurred by the world’s most powerful development finance institutions, they are looking overseas to stage their second act.
Now that the outcome of the referendum is known, we must focus on the future for our sector. It’s important to remember that, despite the recent turmoil, the legal situation today is still the same as the legal situation yesterday. Source link
The Grade II listed property dates back to the 17th Century and was formerly a private residence. It sits within 4 acres (1.6 hectares) of country gardens and now features 36 contemporary bedrooms, an AA Rosette restaurant and wedding and conference facilities for up to 300 guests. The Quorn Hotel
EUA calls on new London Mayor to make energy efficiency a priority Published: 09 May, 2016 Following his election to London Mayor on 5 May, the Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA) is asking Sadiq Khan Make to put energy efficiency at the heart of his policy for London. “An effective
A Construction Safety Campaign has been launched in order to try and reduce the number of accidents that take place when the clocks go back. It is thought that the number of accidents reported increases by as much as 30% when the clocks go back, as darker mornings and evenings
Research has been carried out that shows consumers are moving away from the traditional, offline, high street estate agents. LetBritain has carried out a survey on a nationally representative sample of 2,000 UK adults. The research published has shown that there has been a mass consumer exodus from the more traditional high street offices. One of the main sentiments expressed during the survey is one of widespread frustration in regards to the slow and more cumbersome high street letting agents. Virtual letting agency LetBritain has uncovered this transition as a part of their exploration into consumer sentiment. The nationally representative survey has shown that more than half of the participants regularly go online to obtain the majority of the products and services that they use. 45% of the 2,000 participants favour online services over the ones that would require them to go into a physical premise. A whopping 29% of the respondents have said that they would actively avoid using a business that does not offer an online service. Looking at the location of the participants, it would appear that those in the capital are considered to be the most technologically demanding, with 625 of the Londoners involved in the survey choosing online solutions, and 51% consciously making the decision to avoid businesses without an online service. Across a range of UK industries, the offering of digital solutions enhances the accessibility, transparency and quality of the services that are made available to consumers. In response to this, the majority of the UK society has feels that businesses that do not have an online presence or that require a significantly higher amount of offline communication will be replaced in the next 10 years with an online-only or app-based solution. LetBritain also saw the consumer dissatisfaction was prevalent mostly in the letting market, with renters and landlords discontented at the lack of a quick, accessible and easy online service available for those looking to rent a property.
The architectural practice, Stephen George + Partners have announced that their Birmingham office will be relocated to larger premises. The architectural firm will be moving their offices to Longbridge Technology Park after a search for larger premises. Stephen George + Partners have recently carried out a localised merger with the Birmingham-based company, MKguru Architect Ltd. The move has demonstrated the significant level of expansion that has taken place at Stephen George + Partners in the West Midlands area. The practice has also seen the appointment of a new project Architect, Juma Chipeta. The appointment will lead to an enhancement of the already expansive technical and BIM expertise. The Midlands region of the country is seeing a great deal of economic growth with continually strong levels of investor confidence in property and development. The move for the architectural practice to larger, permanent offices is a demonstration that Stephen George + Partners are dedicated to driving future growth in the long term across the region. The company has announced that they will also be looking to increase their workload in the residential, retail, leisure, commercial and industrial areas. The company have developed a reputation that is enviable, for delivering quality design and robust delivery. The new Project Architect, Juma Chipeta has 25 years of experience in consulting practice. Juma will be joining Stephen George + Partners from Walker Troup Architects, where he worked on a range of residential developments across the Midlands region. No doubt, Juma will be an asset to the company and will flourish in his new position. In the past, Juma has most recently worked on a 150-home scheme that took place on the former Armitage Shanks Tap Works in Wolverhampton. In his new role, Juma Chipeta will be in a hands on position when managing projects on behalf of clients as well as overseeing the Birmingham office expansion of their BIM capabilities across all sectors.
The first residents on Shakespeare Road on The Poet’s in Swindon have been given the keys to their new homes. Neighbours that have lived next to each other for over 30 years in some cases are now gradually being allowed to move into their brand new homes on The Poets. The new homes have been created after the old ones on the same site were demolished due to historic structural issues. This development is the first new build project that has been undertaken by Salix Homes in partnership with their chosen contractor, Galliford Try Partnerships. With the construction work coming to an end residents are being gradually allowed into the new houses on the street they’ve lived on for decades. One of the residents of Shakespeare Road is Gail Howell, who has lived in the area for 50 years. Gail first moved on to Shakespeare Road at the age of six, with her parents. Her family of four children and five grandchildren also live close by. Gail and her family took her parents’ house over following the death of her father and says that the Road will always be her home. It is great that Salix has been working to ensure that there are properties standing on Shakespeare Road for decades to come. Gail lives with her husband on The Poets and was the chair of the residents steering group. The residents have been involved in the development process of the houses from start to finish. The original tenants that were affected by the demolition of the old houses were temporarily rehoused nearby and were given the option to move back into the new properties. The new development has improved the resident’s living conditions, with problems such as damp creeping into the old houses on Shakespeare Road. Now the residents plan to carry on as they always have, in their nice modern new homes.
tado° launches Professional range at PHEX Published: 05 October, 2016 Today at PHEX, tado° announced its new dedicated product range for installers – tado° Professional. tado° Professional is a portfolio of smart heating products, including the Smart Thermostat and Smart Radiator Thermostats, that enables installers to provide remote boiler maintenance to strengthen their customer relationships and improve services. tado° alerts installers when something is wrong with their customer’s boiler. If the consumer has given the remote maintenance approval, installers have the ability to view error codes and other operating data, such as water pressure, burner status, flow temperatures and the pump activity of all their customers in the tado° Professional application. tado° is compatible with any boiler manufacturing brand and wiring plan. These include 230V interfaces for combi boilers, S and Y plans and also low voltage BUS interfaces such as OpenTherm, Vaillant eBus or Worcester HT & EMS Bus. Multi-zone room control for consumers can be realised by extending the setup with multiple tado° Smart Thermostats or tado° Smart Radiator Thermostats for each zone. tado° products also integrate with platforms such as Apple HomeKit, Amazon Echo and O2 Home to enable maximum comfort and convenience for users, while future-proofing homes in the years to come. Source link
Brexit vote gives boost to North East homes North East house prices have enjoyed a Brexit boost, performing strongly in the run-up to and aftermath of the referendum over the UK’s EU membership. Research from North East sales and lettings firm KIS reveals property prices in the region rose 4.8% over the past four weeks, adding £8604 to the value of the typical home. The rise follows a rise of 0.4% recorded in May and means that house prices across the region are now positive over the course of 2016, having fallen by 3.1% in January and 4% in April. The average North East house is now valued at £165,039 with prices 6.5% higher than those recorded in June 2015. House values grew in every single one of the twenty areas surveyed, with rises ranging from 0.7% in Gateshead to 9% in Durham City. The strongest areas for growth included Tynemouth (7.6%), North Shields (7.5%) and Killingworth (7.2%) The former is named this month’s “Best to Buy” due to its year-on-year capital appreciation of 12.5%, the region’s highest. Other strong performers over the past 12 months are North Shields and Houghton-le-Spring (+10.8%). Prices in Jarrow have fallen 0.8% in the same period. The average North East rent rose £10 per calendar month to £580pcm in June – a rise of rise of 1.7%. Rents in the region are now £28 a month dearer than March and have grown by 4% year on year, rising from £565 in May 2015. The rising property prices mean the average North East rental yield falls back 0.1% to 4.3% – still up 0.3% above levels recorded at the end of the last financial quarter. Property Expert Ajay Jagota is founder and Managing Director of North-East based sales and lettings firm KIS and creator of D-lighted, a deposit replacement insurance for private renters. He said: “If you listened to the way some people have been banging on in the media you’d be forgiven for expecting the Brexit vote to have had an apocalyptic impact on the North East and national housing market. But these figures prove just how wrong they were, and to me that’s no surprise at all. “I don’t believe there is a financial crisis around the corner and never have. Of course we saw some pretty unprecedented market volatility in the aftermath of the Brexit vote itself, but thankfully the markets have now calmed down and my prediction is from herein we can expect to see not just continuing growth but the region’s largest gains for some time. “Buyers and sellers traditionally put off big decisions when there is electoral uncertainty and that’s bound to have happened in recent months. But we still saw prices rising by more than seven percent in places like Tynemouth, North Shields and Killingworth. Imagine what’s possible now that uncertainty is over. “Of course we need to be aware of the impact a financial crisis could have on the regional housing market, unlikely as it looks to me. North East house prices only returned to their pre-financial crisis levels in 2014. But rising rents and stable returns are likely to have been a driving force behind this month’s growth, with anecdotal evidence continuing to suggest that the region is continuing to emerge as a destination of choice for national property investors. “If this is the case, the region’s property prices would be more insulated from any financial shocks than last time around, even in the unlikely event they even existed.” Source link
©Getty Back to work: the Colombo Port City Project was temporarily suspended in 2015 Over the past two decades, China’s construction companies have built more infrastructure more quickly than ever before. Now, spurred by the world’s most powerful development finance institutions, they are looking overseas to stage their second act. The China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), which ranked 151st in the 2016 Fortune Global 2000 of leading companies, typifies the global ambitions that are animating the big Chinese builders. More On this story IN Tomorrow’s Global Business “Our ultimate goal is to have 50 per cent of our revenue from overseas,” Fu Junyuan, CCCC’s chief financial officer, told reporters this year. Although he did not give a timescale or say what proportion of current business derives from foreign shores, he did say that the company’s international order book was much more vibrant than its domestic counterpart. Africa was a particular bright spot for CCCC, which employs 112,000 people in 130 countries. At least three projects in Kenya were signed in the first quarter of this year, worth a total Rmb5.4bn ($820m), Mr Fu said. Permission to resume a controversial $1.4bn port city development in Sri Lanka was also obtained in the first quarter of 2016. This same urge to expand abroad is driving the China Railway Group’s attempts ramp up its international business to compensate for softening domestic demand. The China Railway Group plans to boost the share of its revenue that comes from overseas to at least 10 per cent by the end of 2020, up from about 5 per cent last year, according to Li Changjin, chairman of the construction group. The company is working on 405 construction projects in 68 countries. These include the 427km China-Laos railway and the 329km Ethiopian national railway. “The current representation of overseas business is low, but that also means a huge room for improvement,” Mr Li told reporters recently. The 4,400km-long South American Twin Ocean railway project, linking the coasts of Brazil and Peru, ranks as the most ambitious plan so far. The scale of such ambitions might appear absurd were it not for the backing of the world’s most powerful development finance institutions, which often suggest Chinese contractors to carry out the projects to which they lend. We think the Chinese are making moves to expand further into the west and they have a very good chance to take market share – Steven Fisher Two Chinese policy banks — the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China — had outstanding loans to overseas borrowers amounting to an estimated $684bn at the end of 2014, just short of the $700bn owed to all six of the western-backed development institutions put together, according to a study by Boston University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Such largesse is not expected to dissipate as Beijing rolls out its “One Belt, One Road (OBOR)” initiative, a plan to build infrastructure in more than 60 countries between China and Europe, with an estimated investment of about $900bn over the next decade. “There are a lot of additional funds available because the OBOR initiative will accelerate overseas expansion,” says Christoph Nettesheim, senior partner at BCG, a consultancy, in Singapore. “You can see this already, the Chinese construction and construction-equipment companies are very active in OBOR-related areas.” Chinese construction-equipment companies such as Sany, Zoomlion and XCMG are also pursuing ambitious international expansion plans, according to a study by the UBS Evidence Lab, which analysed about 15,000 construction equipment dealerships around the world. The Chinese companies are likely to boost their global market share outside China to about 15 per cent by 2025, up from about 7 per cent currently, according to the analysis. “We think the Chinese are making moves to expand further into the west and we think they have a very good chance to take market share, if they are fully committed to doing so,” says Steven Fisher, UBS analyst. Mr Fisher says the biggest competitive advantage of Chinese companies was a relatively low cost base that allowed them to offer discounts in the region of 15-40 per cent to equivalent premium brand equipment. 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
Now that the outcome of the referendum is known, we must focus on the future for our sector. It’s important to remember that, despite the recent turmoil, the legal situation today is still the same as the legal situation yesterday. Source link
The Grade II listed property dates back to the 17th Century and was formerly a private residence. It sits within 4 acres (1.6 hectares) of country gardens and now features 36 contemporary bedrooms, an AA Rosette restaurant and wedding and conference facilities for up to 300 guests. The Quorn Hotel was the last remaining asset in the Prima portfolio of regional manor house hotels brought to market by Savills in September 2015. The sales of Hellaby Hall Hotel near Rotherham, Stanneylands Hotel in Wilmslow and Nunsmere Hall Hotel in Cheshire have already completed, with this deal bringing the combined total to in excess of £16 million. Ryan Grant of AlixPartners comments: “We are delighted to have concluded the sale of the Quorn Hotel and wish the new owners every success for the future. The expertise and market knowledge shown by Savills has been invaluable to our ability to deliver a successful conclusion to the Prima Group’s administrations.” Martin Rogers, head of UK hotel transactions at Savills, comments: “The Quorn Hotel is the area’s only 4-star offer and has a strong trading record. Its picturesque setting on the banks of the River Soar makes the venue a popular choice for weddings and the new owners will therefore benefit from multiple income streams. We are very pleased to have secured this deal, which completes the sale of the Prima portfolio.” The purchaser was unrepresented. Source link
EUA calls on new London Mayor to make energy efficiency a priority Published: 09 May, 2016 Following his election to London Mayor on 5 May, the Energy & Utilities Alliance (EUA) is asking Sadiq Khan Make to put energy efficiency at the heart of his policy for London. “An effective energy efficiency policy will have diverse and far-reaching positive outcomes for many Londoners; from helping to tackle fuel poverty through to helping to improve air quality,” said Isaac Occhipinti, head of external affairs at EUA. The EUA is calling on the Mayor to: Extend the boiler scrappage scheme to include all non-condensing boilers, as currently financial incentives are available to replace G rated boilers. Carbon emissions and household energy bills can be reduced by switching to an efficient boiler. Implement a robust and all-encompassing domestic energy efficiency scheme to reduce energy bills and help improve the health and wellbeing for London residents. A whole house approach to energy efficiency is needed to help reduce carbon emissions in the capital. Incentivise commercial natural gas vehicles, which have lower emissions and lower operating costs than their diesel equivalents. Currently HGVs contribute nearly 75% of NOx emissions in local geographic areas, where the UK is exceeding annual targets.Natural gas as an alternative to diesel, in buses, LGVs and HGVs, will improve air quality by reducing NOx, CO2, and noise emissions, at no additional cost, and they can use the existing high-quality gas pipeline infrastructure. Source link
A Construction Safety Campaign has been launched in order to try and reduce the number of accidents that take place when the clocks go back. It is thought that the number of accidents reported increases by as much as 30% when the clocks go back, as darker mornings and evenings arrive and weather conditions get worse in the winter months. This year the end of daylight saving will take place on 2 am on Sunday 29th October, and the clocks will go back one hour. There are only a few statistics that record the accidents that take place on construction sites after the autumn time change. However, the road casualties that are recorded by the RoSPA and a range of telematics companies demonstrate the potential risks that construction and site workers may face. Every Autumn when the clocks go back, it gets darker earlier in the day, and road casualties rise by as much as 30% between the hours of 5 pm and 8 pm. The month after daylight saving change, road casualties rise by 10% overall. It has also been recorded that during this period, more thefts occur during the darker late afternoons. VPS are working to highlight their Stay Alert, Don’t Get Hurt Daylight Safety Campaign, with 5 simple steps to help reduce risks in the darker working day. Firstly, VPS recommends issuing an alert on Monday October 23rd and Friday 27th October. The alteration in sleeping pattern could have an impact on alertness, so sleeping patterns must be adjusted accordingly. Secondly it is vital that construction companies make sure that their lighting on site is sufficient and install extra lighting if necessary to improve the safety of the site. Next, it is important that improved safety is carried out to deter theft and trespassing as well as ensuring a safety audit for the site. Also, as another safety point, it is important to inspect all fencing on the perimeter of the site and access points thoroughly to watch for and mend weaknesses. Finally, using the Stay Alert, Don’t Get Hurt Safety Campaign poster can offer a reminder to everyone working on the site to change their habits to suite the darker evenings and help to reduce accidents.