Leader – Page 2
-
NewsMeta surrender epilogue: British Land outlines Regent's Place plan
In September, I used this space to ponder the circumstances around Meta’s surrender of the lease it had taken out on 1 Triton Square, a redeveloped office building in British Land’s Regent’s Place scheme.
-
NewsBuilding needs a zap, stat
Most of us would welcome a drop in the headline rate of inflation, but we must be careful what we wish for. Deflation – or falling prices – is not healthy either, resembling instead the slowing beeps of a monitor as the patient slips away.
-
NewsDecisions, decisions: from the Covid inquiry to levelling-up
The current public inquiry into the handling of the Covid crisis has so far painted a deeply unflattering picture of the way central government arrives at decisions. Among an extraordinary amount of mud-slinging from former advisers, a couple of things stand out.
-
NewsLogistics: highs and lows
The government’s call for evidence on ‘Freight, Logistics and the Planning System’, a consultation that opened in July, closed earlier this month and we must now await a government response in the fullness of time, whenever that might turn out to be.
-
NewsIs infrastructure on track?
The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), an independent agency formed to give advice to government, now publishes a major review of infrastructure progress once every five years – the first National Infrastructure Assessment having landed in 2018.
-
NewsA glittering performance?
As protests go, showering someone in glitter is probably at the preferable end of hurled substances.
-
NewsAll change please
“The right thing to do when the facts have changed is to have the courage to change direction.” So said prime minister Rishi Sunak in his speech to the Tory conference on Wednesday afternoon.
-
NewsWhat to make of Meta?
Meta’s astonishing decision to spend £149m wriggling out of its commitment to lease a London office building from British Land says more about the California-based social media giant than it does about the state of the UK office market.
-
InsightAll eyes on sustainability
As he wrestled with getting the economy back on track in the aftermath of the 2008-09 global financial crisis, then prime minister David Cameron was reported to have told ministers and civil servants alike to “cut the green crap”. This from a man who just a few years previously had ...
-
InsightBeware the sunlit uplands
As I write hastily on Wednesday (20.09.23), I assume speech writers in the back rooms of No 10 Downing Street will be hammering their keyboards with even greater urgency, tasked with framing the government’s shift on climate policy in the best possible light. I don’t envy their task in polishing ...
-
NewsThe money men
This week we publish the inaugural Property Top 40 – a list detailing the best-paid executives running UK-listed firms in the property sector.
-
InsightWhen the fighting stops
It’s a well-worn business principle that adversity brings opportunity. Today’s challenging economic period will undoubtedly give rise to winners as well as losers across the property sector.
-
InsightPolicies are too often up in the air
This week’s air traffic control disruption, apparently caused by a single malformed flightplan, has provided a painful demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.
-
NewsGood, cheap and fresh: pick any two
The irony of being probed for anti-competitive practices in the midst of a transparently difficult year will not bring much comfort to the major housebuilders.
-
InsightRingfence alarm bells
A couple of weeks ago, I dwelt on the declining amounts of money spent on running local authority planning departments across England.
-
NewsM&S lesson: don’t diss retrofit
Michael Gove’s decision last week to throw out plans to redevelop the M&S flagship building on Oxford Street must have been particularly galling for the retailer, given that the secretary of state seems to have prioritised protecting the visual impact of the Selfridges store next door.
-
NewsEase the slow squeeze
A joint paper published by Landsec and British Land last week called for planning policy changes to promote urban regeneration on brownfield sites.
-
NewsEverybody needs good NABERS
At a breakfast briefing last month, Sarah Ratcliffe, CEO of the Better Buildings Partnership (BBP), showed a slide depicting a very strange situation – but one which she found not the least bit surprising.
-
NewsDon’t duck diversity
Loraine Martins OBE has a blunt message for any business leader who doesn’t feel comfortable discussing race, gender or any other aspect of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI): get comfortable.
-
NewsA climate of inaction
It is perhaps ironic that questions around the climate crisis are so often kicked into the long grass, along with other tricky problems best solved later, preferably by someone else.
