UK construction and property
- ESG centre | UCL’s Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction has launched the UK’s first research centre to focus on ESG practices. It is sponsored by Puma Property Finance and will look to identify reliable ways of measuring emissions and social impact, as well as improving knowledge transfer.
- Commercial retrofit | The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) is to launch the Advancing Net Zero Programme focussed on bettering the industry’s understanding of the carbon and cost-effectiveness of retrofitting measures.
- Net Zero | The government announced the creation of a new Net Zero Department, formed by splitting the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy into three separate parts.
- Warehouse land values fell by half in the second part of 2022. According to Colliers, the market saw a correction triggered by the Bank of England’s rate increases. It also suggests that values have almost bottomed out.
- Second stairs are now required in all residential buildings over 30m in London.
- Small sites | A study by LDS Sales Guarantees and Nimbus Maps has found 320,000 small land plots which are currently unused by local authorities but could accommodate 1.6 million new homes. The report claims that nearly 100,000 acres of local authority land are going “unused and unutilised”.
- Output | The latest ONS figures show overall output growth was flat at the end of last year. New work grew 0.5% but individual sectors showed large differences. Public new housing was up 16.5% in the month while private industrial fell 6.5% and commercial output grew 0.7%. On an annual basis, the value of all new construction work was 3.5% larger, but still 2% smaller than its pre-Covid level.
