Category: Uncategorized

Make Help to Buy permanent, says housebuilder Redrow after record profits Redrow entered the current financial year with a strong order book of £1.14 billion in sales, £110 million higher than last year The Help to Buy scheme should become a permanent part of the property market, one of Britain’s biggest housebuilders claimed yesterday as it revealed a record set of profits. Redrow said that builders would not be producing homes at the same pace without the government-backed programme. Steve Morgan, chairman and founder of the FTSE 250 company, said: “If it ain’t broke, why fix it? We have a phenomenal housing shortage in this country and there have been houses...

PENSIONERS will be given incentives to downsize from largely empty family homes to flats and bungalows as part of measures to ease the housing crisis. Sajid Javid, the Communities Secretary, will set out plans to tackle the chronic shortage of housing in a White Paper later this month. Under the plans, which are still being finalised, the Government could give pensioners help with moving costs or an exemption on stamp duty to encourage them to move. Ministers are hoping the measures will encourage older people to move out of larger homes to make space for younger families. Research suggests this could release hundreds of thousands of homes on to the market. The...

  With the number of home buyers rapidly falling, the Government must take action, writes Anna White The number of homes available for sale in estate agents has been steadily declining . Britain’s broken housing market has become a national problem. The UK now has the fourth-lowest level of home ownership in the European Union, with the number of owner-occupiers aged between 25 and 34 falling from 2m in 2001 to 1.3m last year. Rapid urbanisation and a burgeoning population, combined with a 30-year failure to build enough homes, has rendered cities such as London, Edinburgh, Bristol and Oxford as no-buy zones for many. Former chancellor George Osborne inadvertently promised a...

Building a home on a steep site is both an issue and a blessing. Here are our 5 top tips that should offer you some assistance with understanding the issues with building onto sloping land and how to overcome them; providing some initial steps, insight and design solutions.   1 – Level the site yourself – Cut and Fill One route to defeat the issues of building a home on a steep site is to increase  your foundation costs and implement plans to cut out a level plinth and make up levels on the lower edge with the spoil remains. Keep in mind: Test your soil! – weaker ground structure...

With property prices at an at an all-time high in some locations, it’s understandable that one might assume that land value is increasing in line with the value of housing, however this is not always the case. In this blog we take a look at the method for valuing land to help you understand the reality of what to expect from your land valuation. When landowners approach us, there can often be an unrealistic expectation relating to the perceived value of their land. The recurring misconception is that the land is worth is in direct correlation with the current property market but the reality is more complex. The process of land valuations...

Wapping Wharf is a large scale development taking place in Bristol’s harbourside. The location will consist of homes, retail units and office space and aims to form a link between the residential communities of south Bristol and the city center. Wapping Wharf is located south of the river, behind the M Shed Museum, an area which is undergoing a transformation thanks to this and other developments happening in the area, extending the reach of Bristol’s historically harbourside. Developed on derelict land, Whapping Warf has drawn on inspiration from thriving areas in other cities such as the Lanes in Brighton and the Castlefield area in Manchester. With a number of retail units available, Whapping...

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) documents the Government’s planning policies for England and sets out how these guidelines are expected to be applied. In this blog post, we take a look at the basic principles of sustainability laid out by the NPPF and what this means for developers. When the NPPF was published on 27 March 2012 it replaced over two dozen previous planning documents, namely the Planning Policy Statements (PPS) and Planning Policy Guidance Notes (PPG). In replacing these papers the government sought to simplify the process of applying for planning permission, with a strong focus on granting planning for sustainable developments and making the planning procedure more inclusive for individuals and communities....

In our last blog post we covered the issues of access and encroachment and the importance of ensuring your land is not used in any unauthorised way.  Here we take a look at land maintenance and steps you can take to protect your unused land. Keeping a site in the best possible condition will improve its chance of a quick and easy sell, and prevent your planning application being affected by ecological issues taking hold. Failing to take appropriate precautionary steps against certain factors can cause lengthy delays and in some cases even remove the chance of having planning permission granted altogether. Controlling and Managing Wildlife It’s all too easy for an unused...