Good morning.
The Crown Estate is gearing up to reshape its real estate portfolio with a £500m development pipeline, alongside £1bn to decarbonise and improve its portfolio. The direction change comes as the Crown announces a profit lift of 16% to £312.7m, as its portfolio rises by 8.3% to £15.6bn.
Interest rates are predicted to hit 1.25% today as the Bank of England seeks to rein in inflation.
And landlords are to blame for Oxford Street being “overrun” with candy stores selling knock-off goods, says Westminster Council’s leader Adam Hug. Yesterday, his trading standards team swooped on Oxford Street’s American Candy stores, seizing tens of thousands of pounds of counterfeit candy.
Talking of candy, Nick Candy has become the frontrunner to buy online retail group THG, after the investment firms that started the sales process appear to have dropped out.
Tenants in private rented accommodation will be given more protection from unscrupulous landlords under plans put forward today. The white paper, due to be published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, will include measures to tame rogue landlords, ban no-fault evictions and give tenants the right to keep a pet.
Development pipelines could become further constricted, as a 266,000 worker shortfall in the construction industry looms. The industry says it needs to find ways to attract a younger, more diverse workforce.
Don’t we all, writes EG’s editor. But just because we need to attract new talent to the industry, that doesn’t mean we should discount the experience of the old guard. People like Palace Capital’s Neil Sinclair.
Could the City Fringe actually be the role model for the rest of the country? Listen as Voice of the Region finds out.
A couple who won a dispute over a neighbour’s loft extension that encroached on their property have been told to pay 80% of her costs, after the judge concluded that it was a “very minor trespass”(£) that did not deserve to go to full trial.
And finally, more than £1bn of funds will be pulled from existing government schemes to insulate poorer households before the winter sets in. The PM is understood to be keen to ‘divert’ funding from the £1bn scheme that is meant to decarbonise hospitals and schools to people’s homes – largely because schools and hospitals don’t vote. He is also wanting to raid the £450m fund that subsidises heat pumps, which the government is currently hoping people forget exists – it has already pulled all publicity for the scheme. But that leaves the question of what to call the new scheme. Apparently No 10 really wanted to go with “Insulate Britain”, before being politely reminded that this was the name of a protest group. It is now going with “Great British Insulation Scheme” – which seems rather less pithy. How about “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”?
