Good morning,
Michael Gove has given housing developers six weeks to sign legally binding contracts which will oblige them to pay in excess of £2bn to fix unsafe buildings. The levelling up secretary said: “There will be nowhere to hide for those who fail to step up to their responsibilities – I will not hesitate to act and they will face significant consequences.”
And Sir Nigel Wilson has announced his retirement. He says he will stand down as chief executive of L&G within the year.
Gove has also has pledged to bring forward laws to scrap most “feudal” leaseholds in England this year. The legislation will also make it easier for those in flats above shops to buy their freeholds.
In an interview with The Times (£), Gove said the government was partly to blame for the Grenfell Tower fire. “There was a system of regulation that was faulty. The government did not think hard enough, or police effectively enough, the whole system of building safety. Undoubtedly.”
But the government must stop taking the “easy option” of targeting British builders to fix cladding issues, the Home Builders Federation has said. It wants foreign developers and cladding manufacturers to pay a share.
And flats are regaining their popularity, as mortgage rates put many more homes out of reach of would-be buyers.
Meanwhile, Britain’s housebuilders are calling for the return of the Help to Buy scheme in March’s Budget.
Interest rates are widely expected to rise again next Thursday, leading some analysts to predict that this will result in a 20% fall in residential values.
“I have been perhaps the stormtrooper of levelling up,” Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, tells The Guardian. “But this is a very odd way of going about things, having civil servants in London choosing between different projects.”
“We face a stark reality,” writes Landsec chief executive Mark Allan, about its Shaping successful future cities report. “If we fail to take action now, we could be faced with future cities that are virtually unliveable. We need to work together to avoid this dystopian possibility.”
And you can hear more about that in yesterday’s EG Like Sunday Morning.
British businesses have started the year with far more optimism than they ended the last. Overall confidence levels have risen five points to 22%, according to the latest Lloyds Bank Business Barometer. But that is still far below the long-term average of 28%.
Little wonder it isn’t higher, as the number of profit warnings from UK-listed companies rose by 50% in 2022.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Blackstone has filed a deluge of eviction notices as it winds down its pandemic forbearance programme.
More than £1bn of UK property is held under offshore ownership by members of Gulf state royal families.
While many more properties are held by UK citizens through offshore jurisdictions.
Ministers are contemplating plans to make 20mph the default speed limit in England’s built-up areas.
And as Nadhim Zahawi rejoins the backbenches over his tax affairs, The Times (£) has published its list of those who seem to compete to pay the most tax. Property tycoons Ian and Richard Livingstone make the top 10, paying £104m. The Duke of Westminster is at 22, paying £57.5m.
And finally, it appears that Boris Johnson is thinking about moving to Oxfordshire. It is not known who he will get to pay for the house, though.
