Good morning. Here is your daily digest of property news from EG and the national papers.
Homes England is bidding farewell to its chief of staff Amy Casterton, after four years at the agency, just months after the departure of chief executive Nick Walkley. The government quango has also made a raft of promotions ahead of the arrival of incoming CEO Peter Denton.
Co-living behemoth The Collective is making waves in the co-working world, as it launches desks and offices at its 222-bed Harrow scheme.
In New York, Morgan Stanley is upping its vaccine protocols with a move to bar staff and clients that have yet to receive the dose.
Dating app company Bumble is also closing doors across its global network offices – but for a very different reason. The Texas-based business has granted employees a week off to soothe “collective burnout”, following similar moves in Silicon Valley from LinkedIn and Facebook.
Sticking Stateside, the US rental market is set for a shake-up as Blackstone inks a $6bn deal to acquire Homes Partners of America and its 17,000-home portfolio of single family rental housing.
Back on this side of the Atlantic, business owners struggling with coronavirus-related debts have been thrown a lifeline by HMRC which will not pursue them for unpaid taxes.
Hopes for a recovery will be further bolstered as the government prepares to lift all remaining restrictions in England – including working from home, facemasks and social distancing guidance on July 19.
Meanwhile, Scotland is looking forward to full freedom on August 9.
Not that that is holding them back. In Edinburgh, Nuveen Real Estate and Dutch fund manager APG will be toasting the opening of the city’s largest development in a generation at St James Quarter. The first phase of the £1bn project is due to be unveiled tomorrow 24 June.
London has similar cause to be cheerful, as shovels hit the ground at Old Oak Common’s HS2 “superhub”. Work begins today on the £1.7bn station, the largest to be built from scratch in the UK and unlocking the country’s biggest ever regeneration at Old Oak and Park Royal.
If you missed all that in the frenzy of the Euros, you could be forgiven. But, football fans will also benefit from the lifting of restrictions. (It’s not coming home, it’s going out.)
A week after ministers launched into talks to encourage Uefa and Fifa officials and sponsors into the country, they are also expanding new freedoms to fans. The government has signed off a new crowd capacity of 75% at Wembley to allow more than 60,000 to attend the semi-finals and finals, thought to be one of the largest organised public gatherings since the onset of Covid-19.
Said Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin: “This tournament has been a beacon of hope to reassure people that we are returning to a more normal way of life and this is a further step along that road.”
