Grosvenor Records Strong Leasing Performance Across Mayfair and Belgravia
Grosvenor has reported a strong first half of 2026 across its prime central London portfolio, completing 58 leasing transactions spanning more than 80,000 sq ft as demand continues to grow for premium retail, hospitality and commercial space in Mayfair and Belgravia. The property company secured £5.4 million in annual rental income through a combination of new lettings and lease renewals, reinforcing the resilience of two of London’s most prestigious mixed-use neighbourhoods. During the six-month period, Grosvenor completed 37 new leases alongside 21 renewals across its retail, hospitality and office portfolio. New agreements were achieved at rents 9.4% above estimated rental value (ERV), while overall leasing activity outperformed expectations by 7.8%. The performance has helped maintain portfolio occupancy at an impressive 97%, with retail vacancy standing at just 2.6%—significantly below the wider West End retail vacancy rate of 12.2%. For the construction and property sectors, the results demonstrate the continued strength of well-managed, mixed-use destinations where long-term investment in public realm, heritage buildings and carefully curated occupier mixes continues to attract businesses despite wider challenges across parts of the retail market. Mayfair has continued to attract leading international and independent brands seeking flagship London locations. Jewellery brand FoundRae has selected Mount Street for its first UK store, while skincare specialist Melanie Grant will open a new clinic at 129 Mount Street. The area’s hospitality offering has also expanded, with Persian restaurant Berenjak opening on Duke Street following the successful arrival of Crisp at The Marlborough on North Audley Street last year. Meanwhile, Belgravia continues to evolve as a destination for independent retailers, restaurants and lifestyle brands. Eccleston Yards welcomed Weezies, a new restaurant from the team behind neighbouring Amie Wine, while London Epicerie is preparing to open on Ebury Street. Elizabeth Street has recently welcomed jewellery designer Sophie Breitmeyer, while Onyx Matcha Club is due to launch on Motcomb Street later this summer. Pimlico Road has further strengthened its reputation as a destination for interiors and design, with new occupiers including auction house Roseberys and antiques specialist Molly Alexander. The latest leasing activity reflects Grosvenor’s long-term strategy of creating vibrant mixed-use neighbourhoods that combine premium retail, hospitality, workspace and high-quality public realm, supporting both commercial performance and the wider appeal of central London. Amelia Bright, Executive Director of the London Estate at Grosvenor, said: “Our strong performance so far this year reflects the value of a long-term approach to stewardship. We actively shape and curate our neighbourhoods, bringing together the right mix of retail, hospitality, workspace and public realm to create places where people and businesses want to be. The strong demand we’re seeing, reflected in our leasing performance, is a direct result of that approach. We’re also seeing more leading international brands choose Mayfair and Belgravia for their first UK locations, reinforcing both the appeal of our neighbourhoods and London’s global reputation. “Mayfair and Belgravia are part of what makes London one of the world’s great cities, and we’re proud of the role we play in helping them evolve. By continuing to invest for the long term, we’re ensuring these neighbourhoods remain vibrant, attract businesses, talent and visitors, and continue to thrive for generations to come.” The results underline the enduring strength of London’s prime mixed-use districts, where strategic placemaking, heritage-led investment and a carefully balanced mix of commercial, retail and hospitality uses continue to drive strong occupier demand and long-term investment confidence. Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Gateway 2 Approval Unlocks 182 Affordable Homes at Charlton Riverside
A major affordable housing development in Greenwich has taken a significant step forward after Wembley-based Formation Design and Build secured Gateway 2 approval for Hyde’s 182-home scheme at Charlton Riverside. The Eastmoor Street project marks Hyde’s first development to successfully navigate the Building Safety Regulator’s enhanced Gateway 2 process, clearing the way for construction to begin on one of the first phases within the wider Charlton Riverside Opportunity Area. The scheme will deliver 182 affordable homes, with around two-thirds allocated for social rent and the remaining properties made available through affordable home ownership, helping to address the growing demand for high-quality, affordable housing in southeast London. The development represents the first Hyde-led project within Charlton Riverside, where the housing association has planning consent to deliver around 1,200 new homes alongside commercial space, public realm improvements and enhanced connections to the Thames Path. Formation Design and Build worked closely with Hyde throughout the Gateway 2 approval process, coordinating the architectural, structural, fire safety and construction information required to satisfy the Building Safety Regulator’s more rigorous design and compliance requirements. For the construction sector, the successful approval highlights the growing importance of early contractor involvement and integrated project teams in navigating the post-Building Safety Act regulatory environment. Gateway 2 has become a critical milestone for higher-risk residential developments, requiring significantly greater levels of design coordination and technical information before construction can commence. Sean O’Brien, Chief Executive of Formation Design and Build, said: “This approval demonstrates the value of early and close collaboration between Hyde, Formation Design and Build, and the wider project team. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with Hyde, as we move into the construction phase and deliver much-needed affordable homes in Greenwich.” The Eastmoor Street development also forms part of the long-term regeneration of Charlton Riverside, one of London’s largest Opportunity Areas. Future phases are expected to deliver up to 8,000 new homes, thousands of new jobs and a mix of commercial, community and public spaces, creating a vibrant new riverside neighbourhood while supporting the capital’s housing and economic growth ambitions. As more higher-risk residential projects progress through the Building Safety Regulator’s approval process, schemes such as Eastmoor Street are helping to establish new benchmarks for design quality, regulatory compliance and collaborative delivery across the UK’s residential construction sector. Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
BIG YELLOW Expands Newcastle Presence with New Sustainable Self-Storage Development
Big Yellow Self Storage is expanding its footprint in the North East after appointing Caddick Construction as principal contractor for a new purpose-built storage facility in Newcastle, further strengthening investment in the UK’s growing self-storage sector. The design and build project will deliver Big Yellow’s second facility in the city, providing approximately 60,000 sq ft of internal self-storage accommodation across four floors at a prominent site on Scotswood Road. The modern development has been designed to meet the increasing demand for flexible storage space from both domestic and commercial customers, while incorporating a range of sustainable features and high-quality customer facilities. Alongside the storage accommodation, the scheme will include customer loading bays, office and reception areas, staff welfare facilities, car parking, landscaping and associated external works. Sustainability has been embedded into the project from the outset, with roof-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery energy storage systems forming part of the building’s energy strategy. The development has also been designed to achieve a BREEAM ‘Very Good’ rating, reflecting its focus on environmental performance and operational efficiency. Construction is scheduled for completion in summer 2027. For the construction and industrial property sectors, the project highlights the continued growth of the self-storage market, where operators are investing in purpose-built facilities to meet rising demand driven by changing lifestyles, urban development, business flexibility and the increasing need for secure storage solutions. The appointment also continues Caddick Construction’s strong growth across the North East. Since opening its Durham office in 2025, the contractor has secured projects with a combined value of £127 million, significantly expanding its regional presence. The Big Yellow development further strengthens Caddick’s growing portfolio of industrial and logistics projects, adding to schemes such as Richardson Barberry’s new DPD parcel hub at Newton Aycliffe. As investment continues across the self-storage and industrial sectors, purpose-built developments such as the new Big Yellow facility demonstrate the growing emphasis on sustainable construction, energy-efficient buildings and modern customer-focused environments. The Newcastle scheme will not only expand storage capacity within the city but also contribute to the continued regeneration and commercial investment taking place along the Scotswood Road corridor. Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Oktra partners with Material Index to bring reclaimed materials into office design, keeping waste out of landfill
Oktra, a leading office design and build company, has partnered with Material Index, a circular economy platform, to reuse office materials rather than sending them to waste. The partnership comes as sustainability becomes a growing part of how businesses plan their workspaces, with planning and accreditation requirements placing more weight on what happens to a building’s materials, not just how the finished space performs. This partnership gives Oktra a new way to support businesses through that shift. From excess waste to a new workspace Construction produces over 60% of all UK waste and accounts for 12–14% of global CO2 emissions, yet only 1% of building components are currently reused. Meanwhile, an estimated £60bn of valuable building assets across the UK and US were reclaimable last year alone. It is this gap between waste and opportunity that Oktra’s partnership with Material Index is designed to close. Under the partnership, materials removed during a fit-out or refurbishment – carpet and ceiling tiles, desks, chairs, appliances and flooring, often still in good condition are catalogued, assessed for reuse and given a second life rather than sent to landfill, redeployed via Material Index’s marketplace of 300+ trade partners. The same principle works in reverse: when specifying materials for new projects, Oktra can source reclaimed and refurbished materials through the marketplace, rather than defaulting to new. Material Index has already audited over 10,000 sqm of floor space across 6 sites in just two months on behalf of Oktra, identifying over 3,000 tonnes of material available for reuse, with an associated carbon saving of 1,000 tonnes (tCO2e). An industry looking to go circular As sustainability credentials play a more central role in workplace design, developers, designers and workspace providers are shifting towards circular principles. City planning requirements and building accreditation schemes like SKA and BREEAM are placing greater emphasis on waste reduction and reuse, while standards such as the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard are pushing the industry to reduce embodied carbon. Together, they mean the design and build industry is increasingly expected to account for what happens to materials long after a project completes, not just how the finished space performs. Jamie Firman, Head of Sustainability & Environmental at Oktra, said: “”A well-designed office doesn’t need to mean brand new. Reuse can become part of how a space’s identity and character are built, rather than a constraint. By extending the same thinking we already apply to workspaces to the materials themselves, we can give furniture, flooring and fittings a life beyond a single lease. As companies look for their office to say something authentic about their values, being able to point to considered, second-life materials adds a genuine layer to that story. Every move or refurbishment is an opportunity to unlock value from existing assets that might otherwise be waste, and reclaimed materials are often more cost-effective and quicker to source than new, adding welcome security to a volatile supply chain.” Of the partnership, Rob Smith, Managing Director of Material Index, said: “We have been working with Oktra now for over 1 year, so it feels good to formalise the relationship with this license agreement. It will bring consistency and structure across the two organisations, allowing Oktra the autonomy to carry out site audits themselves using the MI AI-enabled audit tool, push materials to our marketplace, or bring Material Index in for additional support at a discounted price. Oktra have demonstrated a willingness to embed the circular economy within their organisation and recognised the commercial benefits of doing so. We have run several workshops with the Oktra team, and they have an appetite to start including reclaimed and excess materials in their fit-outs, starting with their Headquarters. Hopefully, with top-tier contractors like Oktra leading the way on reducing waste, others will follow.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
Ordnance Survey Breaks New Ground with Record Revenue as Britain’s Buried Networks Come into View
Ordnance Survey (OS), Great Britain’s National Mapping Service, announces annual results for the financial year ended 31 March 2026 with record revenues of £198.7m, representing 2.1% annual growth (2024-25: £194.6m). This performance has been driven by the expansion of the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) and continued growth in OS Maps, alongside deepening demand for OS data among its utilities, land and property customers. In its first full year under OS operation on the Government’s behalf, NUAR has brought together records of buried pipes and cables previously held across hundreds of separate asset owners, improving on a process in which engineers requested them individually, and often had to wait days for a response. Instant access to a single, secure view of the assets beneath a site allows contractors to plan works before ground is broken and reduce accidental strikes that cut off power and water supplies, cause delays and risk to life. With Openreach, the UK’s largest broadband network provider, joining the platform and contributing location data for over 550,000 kilometres of its network, NUAR now has data on more than 3.2 million kilometres of pipes and cables, covering over 80% of all known underground infrastructure in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Adoption has broadened across the public and private sectors, with more than 10,000 users and transaction volumes up 115% over the course of the year, while more than 70% of local authorities and 90% of highway authorities have signed up to share information on their critical assets. Across government and commercial markets, OS’s digital map of Britain remains a trusted source of location data and critical backbone of the UK economy. The OS National Geographic Database (NGD) contains over 600 million location features and is updated 30,000 times a day. Four years on from its launch, OS has added a further 16 data collections and delivered 70 major data enhancements into the database, creating the most detailed digital map of Britain to date. More than one million data edits were completed in the past year alone, while use of the database grew by more than 30% over the same period. This data reaches the public sector through the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement, under which six thousand organisations across Great Britain draw on OS data to provide routine but critical services to the public. Its use cases span emergency services and public safety, investment, transport and infrastructure management, healthcare access and planning, sustainability and environmental initiatives, and climate adaptation and resilience. OS has also expanded through integration with key external datasets, including partnerships with the Office for National Statistics and HM Land Registry, strengthening the applicability of its data across a wider range of use cases. Increasingly, this data is being applied to questions of climate resilience and the transition to net zero, to enable better decisions and deliver real-world impact. Analysis integrating Environment Agency flood data with OS’s data found that 12% of England’s roads and 20% of its rail lines could be exposed to climate-related flooding events, while separate analysis identified 1.8 million homes as being at heightened wildfire risk on the edges of towns and cities. OS has also built a machine learning model with Transport for the North to identify which of the region’s 6.4 million households have driveways or off-street parking access, to help local authorities target the location of public chargepoints more effectively. For insurers and lenders, this granularity also underpins how property risk is priced and secured, while for utilities and developers it determines where assets can safely be sited and which need protecting as environmental risks accelerate. Over the past financial year, demand has also deepened across OS’s core commercial sectors, with customer numbers in utilities growing by approximately 9% and land and property by 17%. In the consumer market, the OS Maps app continues to help more people explore and enjoy the great outdoors, increasing subscribers by 6% to 536,000, while OS’s acquisition of the remaining shareholding in Dennis Maps underlines its commitment to maintaining the national series of paper maps. Nick Bolton, Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, commented: “This year marked the 225th anniversary of our first map, and today, OS continues to innovate to meet the evolving needs of the nation. Our role is not just to provide data, but to ensure that it is continuously improving and delivering valuable insights: from mapping the pipes and cables beneath our streets to the flood and wildfire risks facing the communities above them. This work is helping both public and private sectors make better decisions about where to build, what to protect and how to unlock economic growth, as well as social and environmental opportunities. “This demand for trusted location data has delivered another year of growth, and with a six-year programme to build our data foundation now complete, our focus is now on making data more accessible to more people and organisations. Doing so will deepen our role as a strategic partner to government while creating greater value for customers across the private sector and strengthen our role as Britain’s national mapping service.” Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals
£500m Truman Brewery Transformation Secures Government Green Light
Plans for a £500m transformation of the historic Truman Brewery estate in east London have been approved by Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, clearing the way for a major new mixed-use destination close to Brick Lane. The decision follows a planning inquiry into four recovered appeals covering a data centre, a wider mixed-use redevelopment, a commercial building and listed building works. The appeals were formally determined by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on 29 July 2026. Promoted by Truman Estates and Zeloof LLP, with Grow Places acting as development manager, the masterplan will regenerate approximately 1.3 hectares of the former brewery estate across several sites on and around Brick Lane. The proposals comprise around 35,000 sq m of new and refurbished floorspace across eight buildings, including six new structures and the restoration or extension of two existing buildings. Approximately 2,500 sq m of new public realm will also be created as part of the wider regeneration programme. A broad mix of uses is planned, including offices, affordable workspace, shops, cafés, restaurants, food markets, galleries, exhibition and events facilities, community space, a cinema, a microbrewery and a new data centre at Grey Eagle Street. The development will also provide 44 mixed-tenure homes. Eleven will be designated as affordable housing, including six homes for social rent. The socially rented properties are expected to include larger family homes intended to respond to housing requirements within the surrounding community. Buckley Gray Yeoman has developed the overall masterplan and will design parts of the scheme, working alongside Carmody Groarke, Morris+Company, Henley Halebrown and Chris Dyson Architects. Landscape architect Spacehub and sustainability consultant Arup are also supporting the project, with DP9 advising on planning, Publica providing research and urban design expertise and The Townscape Consultancy advising on heritage and townscape matters. Several important elements of the former brewery will be retained and adapted. Chris Dyson Architects is responsible for proposals involving the Grade II-listed Boiler House, which will be extended and upgraded to provide improved exhibition and events facilities. Carmody Groarke will oversee the transformation of the historic Cooperage building, retaining creative workspace while introducing a new microbrewery. Morris+Company is behind the proposed data centre at Grey Eagle Street, as well as further commercial elements within the masterplan. The Grey Eagle Street proposal attracted particular opposition during the planning process, with Tower Hamlets Council raising concerns about the building’s scale, massing and appearance. However, the Secretary of State concluded that the existing building was severely derelict and that its redevelopment would represent a visual improvement. Although the replacement data centre will be substantially taller and larger than the existing structure, the decision found that its scale would relate reasonably to surrounding buildings and would not cause unacceptable damage to the local townscape or nearby heritage assets. Across the wider masterplan, the new buildings were judged to be appropriately considered in terms of height, scale and massing, with the overall design responding positively to the surrounding Brick Lane and Spitalfields context. The approval effectively overturns Tower Hamlets Council’s opposition to the three main planning applications. Councillors and campaign group Save Brick Lane had argued that the site should deliver significantly more housing, particularly affordable homes, given the borough’s extensive housing waiting list. Concerns were also raised about the potential impact of the development on Brick Lane’s cultural character, independent businesses and the area’s Bangladeshi community. However, ministers concluded that there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that an alternative, residential-led redevelopment of the brewery estate would be financially viable or deliverable. Tower Hamlets’ emerging Local Plan, which proposes allocating the site primarily for housing, was therefore given limited weight in the final decision. The Secretary of State determined that the scheme’s architectural quality, regeneration benefits, affordable commercial space and new public facilities outweighed the limited heritage impact and conflicts with local planning policy. The project is also intended to reconnect parts of the brewery estate that are currently separated from Brick Lane by walls, gates and underused buildings. Four new entrances are expected to improve movement through the site, creating stronger pedestrian connections between Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Banglatown and surrounding neighbourhoods. Existing businesses affected by the proposals, including Banglatown Cash and Carry and Backyard Market, will be supported through a relocation strategy. The development team has said that successful and well-used parts of the estate will either remain untouched or undergo sensitive refurbishment and extension. Sustainability and material reuse will also form part of the construction strategy. The developer intends to recycle or reuse approximately 30 per cent of materials identified through pre-refurbishment and demolition audits, including materials salvaged from structures removed during the redevelopment. Grow Places chief executive Tom Larsson described the approval as a major milestone for the project and said the development would support the continued evolution of the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, Spitalfields and Banglatown. Founded in 1666 by Joseph Truman, the brewery became the largest in the world at the height of its operations during the 19th century. Brewing ceased at the site in 1989, after which the estate developed into a destination for independent businesses, creative industries, markets, exhibitions, shops and hospitality operators. Building, Design & Construction Magazine | The Choice of Industry Professionals