Good morning,
Cushman & Wakefield(£) has filed an appeal against a ruling that ordered it to hand over more documents to an investigation of Donal Trump’s property empire. The firm says it has already handed New York attorney-general over 40,000 pages of documents to the inquiry, which is looking into whether Trump falsified property valuations(£) for financial gain.
Michael Gove has been slapped down by No 10 for saying that hitting an “arbitrary” housebuilding target(£) was less important than ensuring local residents welcome new development(£).
But the announcement of mini-referendums for planning sums up the ridiculousness of vast swathes of the real estate-related proposals announced in the Queen’s Speech, writes EG’s editor. Instead of giving Nimbys a bigger voice, how about forging better relationships with the very best in real estate. After all, as Allsop’s Scott Tylor says: “There is no path to levelling up that doesn’t run through real estate.”
Meanwhile, MPs have been told they must face the realities of their own real estate. They face a stark choice – move out of the Palace of Westminster(£) for 20 years, or spend the next 76 years and £22bn doing repair work.
But while MPs want to stay at their desks, senior civil servants(£) are fighting against attempts to order them back to theirs. They have backed motions by the FDA union(£) demanding greater flexibility.
Annington Homes(£) – which is backed by Guy Hands’ Terra Firma – has been given permission for a judicial review of the MoD’s plans to take back part of its housing estate.
Debenhams’ administrators have made £5.3m in fees in the two years since the department store chain filed for insolvency. But 90% of the 124 closed stores are still unoccupied.
The Church of England is planning to pump more of its money into rural parishes after admitting that it “got it wrong” by focusing on urban congregations.
And finally, don’t want to go into the office, but can’t work at home? “What better place than the local supermarket?”(£) says IWG boss Mark Dixon. No, Dixon isn’t recommending that we all retrain as shelf-stackers. He is opening a flexible office at a Tesco Extra in New Malden, south London.
