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The move will cost the Alternative Futures Group £4.6m

Rebecca Hickman has been with the charity since 2006

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator has gained the power to remove charities that have failed to submit accounts on time and have not engaged with the regulator

A list of central government’s most important contracts, also showing up to four relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for those contracts, and the performance of the vendor against those KPIs.

Leicester City Council have agreed on plans to borrow over £40m to buy properties in a desperate attempt to ease the growing housing emergency.

As the cost-of-living continues to bite and interest rates are set to stick at 5.25% for the foreseeable, demands for affordable housing are increasing. Without action, Leicester City Council have said they would face extra costs of £23m in the coming financial year.

Against this backdrop, the local authority are set to borrow £45m so they can purchase more homes. Overall, 225 properties will be bought to use as temporary accommodation and a further 125 will be leased at affordable rent rates.

Previously, this idea was put to councillors in January although it was withdrawn after legal concerns were raised.

City Mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, said the matter was ‘legally complex’ and the council would be using the time to seek assurances from the government that its proposals were above board. In addition councillors were also concerned that the borrowing costs would come from the general budget rather than a pot of money specifically set aside for housing.

However, this time around councillors have been assured that other authorities have undertaken similarly funded purchases without problems. Although, Patrick Kitterick, a councillor for the Green Party, warned, just because legal action has not yet been taken on cases like this, it doesn’t mean it can be ruled out in future.

The most recent published housing waiting list figures for Leicester display just how much new affordable housing is needed. In January this year, 6,431 people were on the list and more than 5,0000 can expect to wait more than five years for a suitable home.

In addition, the number of people without a permanent place to call home is also increasing. In August 2022, there were 94 households in temporary accommodation across the city and by December 2023 the number had soared to 332.

Image: Jamie Hunt

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Michael Gove has launched legal action against the landlord of a Canary Wharf apartment complex to pay over £200m towards building safety works.

The Grenfell Tower disaster left thousands of people across England heartbroken and has since forced the UK government to evaluate the safety of buildings across the country. With this in mind, last week the Secretary of State served the landlord of an apartment complex in Canary Wharf with legal action to improve the safety of the building.

From this, the landlord will be required to pay £20.5m towards building safety works.

In addition, according to government officials, the housing department have also applied to a property tribunal in a bid to get John Christodoulou’s Yianis Holdings Ltd, a privately owned property organisation, to contribute to fixing safety problems at the Canary Riverside development.  

Two other companies in the Yianis Group have been affected by the action, which marks the first move by Gove to use legal powers under the Building Safety Act. The legislation was passed in 2022 following the aftermath of Grenfell tower.

The department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said: ‘Where developers and freeholders have profited from unsafe buildings, we will use powers in the landmark Building Safety Act to recover funds.

‘We will continue to take action against those who do not take responsibility for building safety issues.’

The Building Safety Act allows the government, regulators or other ‘interest persons’ such as leaseholders to apply for orders requiring building owners, developers, or others to fix building safety defects or make payments towards the costs.

Against this backdrop, Yianis Group said that property tribunals had uncovered that the two other companies were ‘accountable persons’ under the act for the four residential buildings within the Canary Riverside development.

According to the developments website, inspections of the buildings unmasked problems with cladding and insulation that needed to be remediated.

The fire at Grenfell Tower tragically killed 72 people when it spread through the external cladding. It triggered a building safety crisis that led to defects being identified in residential blocks across the country and has left some leaseholders unable to sell their properties and are now, as a result, facing huge bills.

Image: Fas Khan

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Adam Neumann has offered more than £350m in an attempt to regain ownership of the problematic shared office space organisation.

Back in November last year, WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, suggesting the potential end of the company. However, last month it become known that the former co-founder of WeWork, Adam Neumann, was trying to meet with the company to negotiate a deal to buy it outright. Now, Neumann has made his offer.

Flow, Neumann’s property company – which is expected to launch this year, but details are yet to be released – claimed last week that it had submitted a bid with a ‘coalition of half a dozen financing partners.’ The Wall Street Journal, who were the first to report on the offer, said it was tabled at more than $500m, which equates to £350m.

In a statement shared with Reuters, WeWork said their organisation is ‘extraordinary’ and it’s ‘no surprise we receive expressions of interest from third parties on a regular basis.’

The company added: ‘Our board and our advertisers review those approaches in the ordinary course, to ensure we always act in the best long-term interests of the company.’

Neumann, who was once tipped to join the ranks of the world’s richest people, resigned as chief executive of WeWork in September 2019. Earlier that year, the company invested heavily in long-term leases for some of the world’s most expensive real estate markets, amassing almost 800 locations that spanned 39 countries.

However, investors were sceptical of the terms of the stock listing, including demands that each of Neumann’s shares should carry 20 times the votes of ordinary stock, and that his wife should have a say in selecting his successor should he die. As a result, the IPO was postponed, and Neumann later left the company altogether.

Images: P. L. and Brandon Hooper

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