All Expert comment articles – Page 8
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Insight
Motionspot’s Ed Warner on why progressive firms must include facilities to ease menopause and menstruation symptoms
October is Menopause Awareness month and while a significant proportion of the workforce is made up of people who experience menstruation, menopause, and hormonal change – including women, non-binary individuals, and transgender men and women – little is done in the workplace to acknowledge this.
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Insight
POD’s David Goldberg on the ethical dilemma of management companies skimming commission
Over the years, some property management firms have come under fire for skimming commissions on maintenance contracts. Now, amid an ongoing cost-of-living crisis and soaring interest rates, this topic has attracted new attention from homeowners and landlords alike.
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Insight
Commit to delivering biodiversity net gain
Biodiversity net gain (BNG) legislation, which was due to come into force next month, has now been delayed until January. The legislation requires property developers to deliver a minimum 10% BNG to help protect and enhance the nature on the land they are developing. But why is this legislation important?
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Insight
Be up front about fire risk
An industrial multi-tenant property is only as safe as the riskiest tenant.
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Insight
Haysmacintyre’s Paul Atkins on why careful management of tax liabilities is key to navigating cashflow
For developers, the current environment is proving difficult to navigate. After several years of sustained growth in the housing market, prices have been dropping, which, combined with wider economic challenges – not least a sharp rise in interest rates – and the introduction of stringent new regulations, has left developers ...
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Insight
It’s time for a change at the top
Last week’s two by-elections were terrible results for the Conservatives. It’s true that if Reform UK’s vote, which attracts some hard-right Tories, had been added to their vote they would have very narrowly won in Mid-Bedfordshire.
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Insight
UKGBC’s Simon McWhirter on why the built environment needs a paradigm shift
To deliver a sustainable, net zero future, the built environment needs a paradigm shift. We must channel our deep dismay at the government’s short-sighted rollback into a powerful, collective voice focused on the changes we need.
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Insight
Fruition’s Parul Scampion on the political chokehold on SME developers
In the modern landscape, political uncertainty has become an ever-present shadow on businesses of all sizes. However, it is the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that bear the brunt of this instability; it undermines the ability to plan, invest and contribute to the critical task of providing much-needed new homes. ...
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Insight
Prestbury Investments’ Nick Leslau on the US investment cycle and its impact on the UK
I am currently in California, a place I haven’t visited since just before Covid-19. Recently, reading that some of the planet’s biggest real estate investors such as Blackstone and Brookfield have been handing back keys to lenders, I have been keen to understand the scope of the problems in the ...
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Insight
UK housing’s mixed weather map
“On a bad day… you can see Wales,” a chief executive of a national housebuilder joked some years ago while unveiling homes by the Severn Estuary outside Bristol. Since then, local prices have soared, forcing many workers in the booming Somerset area to buy on the other side of the ...
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Insight
Vistry Group’s Jack Brayshaw on waiting for the Future Homes green light
Since the government announced the Future Homes Standard (FHS) in 2021, the housebuilding industry has been working hard to prepare for the new building regulations that come into force in 2025, requiring all homes to be 75% to 80% more energy efficient, and ready to transition to net zero emissions.
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Insight
Local authorities lead the way in implementing net zero housing
It may seem far away, but restructuring our economy to meet net zero by 2050 is a huge undertaking. Despite the challenge, some impressive policy to achieve the government’s legal target is coming forward.
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Insight
ULI’s Lisette van Doorn on why carbon pricing is key to decarbonise real estate
How can real estate collectively address the sector’s impact on the environment to achieve a carbon-neutral, or even carbon-positive, built environment?
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Insight
AXA IM Alts’ Phillip Shalless on the role of community-focused real estate
When it comes to the design and operation of new buildings, environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are right at the top of the agenda.
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Insight
SEC Newgate’s Laura Leggetter on how gender equity leads to better community engagement
Have you ever thought about the height of the shelves in your office kitchen? Where the main entrance is – or how well it’s lit? How about the amenities around your office: not just the places to grab a sandwich or take clients for a drink, but also the nursery ...
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Insight
World Architecture Festival’s Paul Finch on a question of trust
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust, by Herman Diaz, concerns two lives and the way they were lived – or the way they were lived according to accounts written by people (themselves artificial literary creations) with personal axes to grind.
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Insight
Infrastructure is key to housing crisis
Editor: The prime minister’s party conference speech had little mention of the housebuilding sector – in fact, it had zero. We did hear, however, that if we are to “create change and drive growth across our country”, then “we must get our infrastructure right”.
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Insight
Prime minister needs to match words with action
Editor: To make substantial change to housing scarcity, we should be overhauling both our strategy and regulations in a number of key areas – not least by beginning to fix our broken planning system.
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Online
BPSDC’s Simon Murphy on Battersea Power Station’s one-year anniversary
This Saturday, Battersea Power Station celebrates the first anniversary of its reopening, 40 years after it was decommissioned, with more than 11 million people having visited over the last 12 months.
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Insight
FORE Partnership’s Basil Demeroutis on the bonfire of politics
The storms lashing our economy have been mirrored by the battering the green transformation has taken these last few weeks. Grasping a straw from the Uxbridge by-election, prime minister Rishi Sunak has retreated on, well, just about everything