he Hill Group, the UK’s second-largest privately-owned housebuilder, has completed the full portfolio refinance in the first major sustainability-linked loan (SLL) valued at £220m, maturing in 2026. As the group’s main source of debt funding for the delivery of its private development pipeline, this revolving credit facility was last renewed in December 2017 for £200m but has now been increased to £220m, with household UK banks; Lloyds Bank, NatWest, HSBC and Santander, each committing to a £55m loan. The refinance will support the Group’s five-year plan to double the size of the business to £1.2bn by 2025. “Our sustainability-linked loan refinancing is an important step in our overarching group vision to become a leading sustainable housebuilder in the UK. We are extremely pleased with the confidence that these leading banks have placed in our long-term development plans,” said Tony Parker, Finance Director at Hill. The new SLL will fund Hill’s long term development projects including multiple award- winning Knights Park development in Cambridge; Woolwich Leisure Centre, a mixed-used regeneration project comprising 500 new homes and community facilities, and the regeneration of the Teviot Estate in Tower Hamlets, London. Using the SLL for its portfolio refinance, Hill will benefit from a lower interest cost as their green credentials increase in the future. This is based on four sustainability linked criteria – biodiversity net gain, reducing operational carbon, reducing scope 1&2 carbon and the company’s overall sustainability rating as measured by the NextGeneration scoring system. David Cleary, Head of Housing at Lloyds who acted as sustainability co-ordinator for the deal, added: “We are delighted to have helped complete the refinancing of The Hill Group’s assets in partnership with NatWest, HSBC and Santander in our first SLL of the year in the housebuilding sector. It is a great step towards achieving a more sustainable future and we hope to see more housebuilders follow suit in the near future.”

Brickflow, the UK’s first search engine for development finance, reports a record number of loan terms that accounts for £88 million that were issued through its deal forum in November. The deal forum is similar to a competitive tender process; developers input their project details and Brickflow’s algorithms select the lenders most likely to make a loan offer and on which loan terms. Borrowers can then choose up to five lenders to bid in a blind auction. Brickflow’s platform secured competitive interest rates, with Loan to Gross Development Values ranging from 50% to 83%, for 17 developers that have funding for projects in the residential, hotel, HMO, retirement living, light industrial and supported living sectors. “By creating an auction environment, borrowers receive the most competitive rates in record time. A LTGDV of 83% is unheard of, especially at a blended senior & mezzanine rate of 8.49%. Our online tools help borrowers complete perfect lender presentations – with first time users stating they can do it within 15 minutes,” commented Ian Humphreys, Brickflow’s co-founder and head of lending. “Our goal is to connect borrowers and lenders in seconds and give developers seamless and fast access to property finance. Judging by November’s activity, I’m confident we can become the UK’s leading facilitator of all development finance transactions.” Below is a summary of the property types, loan sizes and winning interest rates. The cumulative LTGDV being 65.56% at an average rate of 7.05%. Location Property Type GDV Loan Size Loan to GDV Winning Bid Midlands Residential £2,694,600.00 £1,697,598.00 63% 6.25% Midlands Residential £2,550,000.00 £1,657,500.00 65% 6.25% London Hotel £15,300,000.00 £9,015,230.00 59% 6.00% East Anglia Residential £2,600,000.00 £1,508,000.00 58% 6.25% Midlands HMO £4,250,000 £2,592,500.00 61% 6.25% Scotland Residential £2,200,000 £1,408,000.00 64% 8.40% South-East Light industrial £2,148,000.00 £1,065,408.00 50% 8.10% North-West Residential £7,950,000.00 £5,521,000.00 69% 6.40% South-East Residential £9,460,000.00 £7,851,800.00 83% 8.49% North-West Residential £2,510,000.00 £1,631,500.00 65% 8.10% London Residential £44,000,000.00 £29,040,000.00 66% 7.50% Midlands Retirement living £9,500,000.00 £6,175,000.00 65% 7.25% South-East Residential £14,576,800.00 £9,474,920.00 65% 6.45% East Anglia Residential £3,440,500.00 £2,236,325.00 65% 6.65% East Anglia Residential £1,932,000.00 £1,255,800.00 65% 7.00% East Anglia Residential £7,184,000.00 £4,669,600.00 65% 6.65% Midlands Supported living £2,548,000.00 £1,605,240.00 63% 7.90%

Plumbers have been overlooked in the Government’s plans to end the use of gas boilers in British homes, putting the whole Net Zero agenda in jeopardy, a think-tank warns today. The Social Market Foundation said that the Government strategy aimed at decarbonising home heating does not give plumbers and other workers enough incentive to get training to install the heat pumps that ministers want to replace gas boilers. The SMF is undertaking a major research project with the heat installer workforce.  Its interviews with plumbers suggest that many see little reason to spend time and money getting the skills needed for heat pumps. The UK’s Net Zero plans mean decarbonising the heating of buildings, including homes, which account for 14% of carbon emissions. Over the coming decades that will mean replacing millions of domestic fossil fuel-burning heating systems with new ones, including heat pumps. The Government’s stated ambition is for a deployment of 600,000 heat pumps installed a year by 2028. The Heat Pump Association estimates that 50,200 fully trained heat pump installers will be required to fit one million heat pumps a year by 2030. But the SMF found that the Government does not appear to know how many installers are currently trained for heat pumps.  Official Net Zero documents use different figures, the SMF found. The Heat and Buildings Strategy, published by the business department, suggests that there are 1,100 fully accredited companies.  The Net Zero Strategy, published by Boris Johnson on the same day, suggests there are currently 3,000 trained fitters. SMF analysis of the heat strategy, published today, concludes that the policies it sets out do not give plumbers and installers enough reasons to train for heat pumps.  The strategy overlooks the fact that most the relevant workers are self-employed sole traders, who must spend their own time and money on training. Many plumbers do not currently believe that such training will be soon justified by work installing heat pumps, the SMF found.   The heat strategy does not do enough to support household demand for heat pump, it concluded: the £450 million set aside for grants will support just 90,000 new pumps a year for three years.   The heat strategy also postpones a decision on whether to support the use of hydrogen in boilers as an alternative to fossil fuel gas. That creates uncertainty among plumbers about heat pumps, the SMF said. Finally, the SMF found that some plumbers, especially those closer to pension age, are calculating that existing gas boilers will create enough work for them until they retire.   Ministers have said they hope to end all installations of new gas boilers by 2035, but have not set a firm deadline and insist that no-one will be required to replace a pre-existing boiler. The combined effect will be that Britain risks being left with not have enough workers with the skills and training needed to replace millions of gas boilers, the SMF said. Amy Norman, senior researcher at the SMF, said: “Taking the carbon out of home heating is a vital part of Net Zero, and the Heat and Buildings Strategy is a good start.  But as things stand, the government isn’t creating enough incentives to plumbers and other heat workers to get the training needed to replace gas boilers with greener alternatives.  That can still be fixed, but unless it is, forgetting to call the plumber could put Boris Johnson’s whole green agenda at risk.” “Plumbers, installers and heat engineers are vital to Britain’s greener future. They’re skilled workers who are used to making sure they have the right training to meet customers’ needs. But when you’re your own boss, you need to know the costs of training are going to be worthwhile, and right now Net Zero plans don’t offer enough incentives to train.”

Locatee, the leading workplace analytics solution, has raised 8.4m USD (7.7m CHF) in a Series B growth-financing round led by the European growth equity fund SmartFin. The funding will underwrite the further innovation of Locatee’s platform that leverages existing IT infrastructure for office occupancy data utilization and management support of workspace ecosystems centered on employee experience, safety, and productivity. “The last year has been quite the ride for Locatee – even with the market being in a pinch due to the pandemic, we could still see how our solution is highly valued and sought after”, said Thomas Kessler, co-founder and CEO of Locatee. “Together with the board, employees, and stakeholders, we looked at the market signs, and saw the opportunity to double down on growth and value creation, selecting SmartFin to lead this push with us”. SmartFin, a firm with c. 380m EUR assets under management, led the 8.4m USD funding round that included new investors such as Zürcher Kantonalbank, Swiss Immo Lab, and Verve Ventures, as well as previous investors FYRFLY Venture Partners and Tomahawk VC. The new funding adds momentum to Locatee’s Series A round that raised 4m USD in 2020. “SmartFin’s strategy is to work with European market-leading technology companies to help them build and grow”, said Jürgen Ingels, SmartFin Founding Partner. “Locatee has proven to be brilliant in establishing a strong, leading position in a new, exciting and fast-growing market and we believe this is a key time to build from this leading position and create the new standard for workplace data”. High growth marketLocatee is leading the occupancy analytics market that is estimated to grow to more than 5bn USD by 2025. This growth is underpinned by the transformation of the role of the office, which accelerated with the Covid-19 pandemic. The onus is on businesses to experiment and validate their office spaces and thus use real-time utilization data. Locatee helps corporate companies resolve the tension between creating the right work experience and making the correct investment in their workspaces. People at the center of the work experienceLocatee has already upended the workplace analytics market by providing value for Forbes Global 2000 companies, automating once manual systems counting exhaustive badge data for measuring building occupancy. Companies are pressed to enable new ways of work, reduce their footprint, and improve employee health, wellbeing, productivity and experience. Locatee’s capacities, generate data that brings together the built environment and the people that occupy it. “The vision for Locatee’s solution which convinced us before continues to receive validation by both the market and the developments in the corporate world,” said Philipp Stauffer, co-founder and managing director at FYRFLY Venture Partners – a repeat Locatee investor. “We have built capabilities that have created a new category and established us as a market leader; we now look at realizing the full potential of the market, as it wakes up to this new world of work.”

Hundreds of thousands of businesses promised business rates reliefs through the £1.5 billion Government Business Rates Relief Fund have still not received a penny, despite promises made by the Government last Spring. In March, the Government took the unprecedented step of announcing it would legislate that Material Change of Circumstance (MCC) business rates appeals for businesses impacted by Covid-19 would not be valid for the appeals system – a move that was lambasted by the rating profession at the time and put paid to the hopes of hundred of thousands of businesses who had started the appeals process against their rates bills, on the grounds of the impact the pandemic had had on their businesses. * As a sweetener the Government announced a £1.5 billion New Business Rates Relief fund for businesses affected by COVID-19, outside the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors, which would be distributed by Local Authorities. The relief fund would “get cash to affected businesses in the most proportionate and equitable way.” The Government also said, “We’ll work with and support local government to enable ratepayers to apply as soon as possible this year, once the legislation relating to MCC provisions has passed and local authorities have set up local relief schemes.” All well and good- except the legislation relating to MCC provisions has still not passed through Parliament and become law- six months on – and there are no signs it will be passed in the immediate future. Not only that but as John Webber, Head of Business Rates at Colliers points out, “As far as we are aware neither the government nor the billing authorities have engaged with the rating industry or set out any guidance for businesses to apply to receive this relief fund. We are still very much in the dark.” There are also rumours that the government will leave it to each billing authority to draw up its own guidance – a situation Webber describes as “carnage.” “Giving the local authorities the ability to decide who will be eligible for the reliefs is just not prescriptive enough and we know from past experiences that authorities all have different interpretations of the regulations. We’ll have 300 odd policies and whether businesses receive relief or not will be a total  ”postcode lottery.” Webber points out that by the time the billing authorities get their plans together it will be between 18 months and two years since Covid set in and the first Lockdown began and  the Government told office workers to work from home. That’s nearly two years for businesses who’ve been adversely impacted by Covid-19 to miss out on the support they need. “One wonders what state they’ll be in by the time the reliefs are actually paid out.” “As we said at the time when the government announced this retrospective move to deny MCC appeals, £1.5 billion will not even scratch the surface for businesses struggling to pay their rates bills from last two year- over 400,000 of whom had started the appeals process in what was “the largest MCC caused by a single event in rating history”. “But to not even get the scheme started yet is a disgrace and affront to businesses.” Please Note *between April 1sts 2020, just after the start of the first Lockdown, and end March 2021, 409,430 checks (the first stage of the appeals process) were registered by businesses, most of whom had been impacted by Covid-19. This dwarfs the 158,910 number of checks registered in the previous three years (April 2017 to March 2020) and shows the total disruption to hundreds and thousands of businesses caused by the pandemic and lockdowns.

Commercial property estate agency Ernest Wilson has sold Bradford timber merchants Baildon Timber to the Myers Group, a Huddersfield-based building supplies business, for £1 million. The Myers Group, which has been owned and run by the same family for four generations and employs 350 people across West Yorkshire, now plans a £500,000 investment in the business in order expand the stock range and carry out a full refurbishment of the site and buildings. “Baildon Timber is the perfect fit for us and there are clear synergies between our two family businesses, particularly as we both serve a customer base that is largely made up of small construction companies. The acquisition meets our aspirations for growth in the timber sector, as well as expanding our geographic footprint into the Baildon and east Bradford area of Yorkshire,” said James Berry, managing director of the Myers group. The Myers Group, whose range of building supplies services to housebuilders and renovators spans skip hire, ready mix concrete and aggregates, as well as kitchens and bathrooms, plans to create three new jobs immediately at Baildon Timber, with further hires scheduled for the coming months. “We pride ourselves on being a growing, progressive business and we’re really pleased to be able to invest in Baildon Timber to make it a bigger and better business. As well as a total refurbishment, we are creating a new, larger shop and trade counter and diversifying the product range to include other building supplies as well as timber,” said James. “Myers Group’s acquisition of Baildon Timber is a really good example of how the sale of a small business has triggered new investment and growth. Demand for small businesses like Baildon Timber is currently outstripping demand so the current market really is an ideal one for any business owner looking to exit the business,” added Michael Peel, Ernest Wilson sales manager. Acquired by property consultant Eddisons in 2019, Leeds-based Ernest Wilson was founded in 1956 and specialises in buying and selling hundreds of small businesses every year, from fish and chip shops to convenience stores and hotels. It has sold businesses worth more than £36 million of since the start of the pandemic.