Good morning.
The final easing of lockdown will be delayed by four weeks(£), or possibly just two weeks(£), the PM will announce today.
It is hoped the delay will allow more time for vaccinations and control the spread of the Delta variant, but lobby groups say it will be devastating for firms(£). The FSB, UK Hospitality and BCC have all said they will ask for further support.
Meanwhile the UK’s big banks(£) are waiting anxiously for some sort of certainty.
As ministers weigh up proposals to block landlords(£) from kicking hospitality tenants out of their properties…
… Landlords are striking back, with plans to evict NCP(£) from some of its best sites over an escalating rent row.
More than 100 business leaders have warned Boris Johnson that the planning reforms will break legally-binding environmental targets.
The Duke of Northumberland is weighing up investing in the 4,500 acre regeneration at Teeside freeport(£).
The billionaire owner of Bloor Homes(£) resumed donations to the Tory party just days after ministers green lit a controversial housing scheme.
WeBuyAnyCar has decided to buy a racetrack to go with them, snapping up Rockingham Speedway(£) for £80m.
Sigma Capital’s share price soared by 34% on Friday, after it agreed to PineBridge Benson Elliot’s £188m takeover.
Nottingham University(£) is selling a city centre site to Watkins & Jones for a £40m student scheme.
Meanwhile, Tritax has been given consent for its 1m sq ft employment park in Merseyside.
Tower Hamlets’ has deferred a vote over plans to replace an Asda on the Isle of Dogs, E14, with 1,972 flats and a new superstore.
A private equity firm has bought an undisclosed chink of the Salesforce Tower.
And Savills has bought life science and tech advisory firm T3 Advisers.
https://www.egi.co.uk/news/savills-buys-life-sciences-firm/
JLL’s Andy Poppink has moved from California to head EMEA, but he has brought some Silicone Valley thinking with him.
Working from home is a fad, George Iacobescu tells The Times (£).
But returning to the office will need to be done carefully(£).
More than 50,000 homebuyers are at risk of missing the stamp duty deadline(£), even though it was extended to stop precisely that from happening.
London’s boat dwellers are furious with plans to reduce the number of mooring spots on the city’s waterways.
Rising tower blocks are starving children of sunlight, campaigners have warned.
And a father whose unborn baby died because of the Grenfell disaster wants to turn the ruins of the 24-storey tower into a high-rise garden.
A senior cybercrime officer has warned that selling luxury flats for bitcoin(£) could create unprecedented opportunities for criminal gangs.
And in an unprecedented EG Like Sunday Morning, the gang looks at how many times the ‘unprecedented’ appears in annual results after the last unprecedented 18 months.
(What is perhaps unprecedented is that LondonMetric has been over-using the word since 2019.)
Unesco has backed protestors in France who are opposing a massive Amazon warehouse near the Pont du Gard(£).
And finally, while landlords limber up for their battle against NCP, the UK’s most expensive car parking space outside London has just sold. The unassuming rectangle of tarmac(£) in a small carpark in St Ives, Cornwall, has been bought for a staggering £45,000 after only a week on the market. It isn’t even that close to the action, being at least a half hour’s walk away from the beach. But it does have sea views, if you stand on the roof of the car.
