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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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The UK’s undershoot on heat pumps underlines the challenge of decarbonising the built world. Catriona Hyland, research analyst at A/O, presents six priorities we need to tackle urgently.

Once again, despite good intentions, targets and soundbites, yet another attempt at decarbonising our homes is on the ropes as it’s reported the uptake of heat pumps across the UK has sputtered and stalled.

If we’re to meet our climate change targets, the government wants to install 600,000 low-carbon heat pumps a year over the next four years. In 2022, total installations hit just 55,000. The blame has been placed on their price, low awareness among consumers and divisions within government itself. Wherever blame lies, we’re falling damagingly short of making this necessary change.

Decarbonising homes is a priority for the government because heating generates 18% of UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions contribute to the wider, large-scale emissions created by the built world as a whole. Data shows that of the 50 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases released each year, and counting, more than a third (37%) comes from the built world. Three quarters of buildings in the EU are classed as energy inefficient – a number that’s set to rise to as much as 90% by 2050 – and the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy rose yet again in 2023. All against a backdrop of another month of record-breaking global air, and sea surface temperatures in February.

Decarbonising the built world sector, therefore, is urgently required if we are to meet our global climate targets. Yet the scale of the problem, and in particular knowing what to prioritise, also presents the greatest challenge.

Building owners and investors are increasingly waking up to this challenge, as are policy makers. But as the National Audit Office’s report on decarbonising home heating demonstrates, change can not be driven in isolation. There must be a considered and joined up approach where we double down on the most impactful factors. Here are the most pressing.

1. Powering up the grid: There are systemic difficulties in making the switch to renewable energy. One of the biggest being how we power up the grid to be able to reliably and sustainably access the renewable energy we generate. If we’re to make the transition, we urgently need to create better energy storage, and smarter trading and grid tech solutions. Investors need to ramp up investments into companies building future-proofed grids, while real estate owners and property developers need to play their role, from fitting solar arrays and batteries, to investing in ways to monitor building efficiency and reducing the costs associated with clean energy.

2. Addressing the labour and skills shortage: The energy transition is creating huge demand for new skills in construction causing global, industry-wide transformations the likes of which haven’t been since the Industrial Revolution. This shift will require the workforce involved in the retrofitting and climate tech sector to quadruple by 2030. At the same time, there is an urgent need for plumbers, welders, joiners, fitters, electrical engineers and surveyors to upskill. Companies like Germany’s Enter are helping to address this talent shortage, but the private sector cannot meet this demand alone. There needs to be a public policy push towards training programmes, apprenticeships, and reskilling initiatives that make these skills a priority.

3. Building smarter with AI: There’s a huge, and relatively untapped, opportunity to solve many of the problems facing today’s inefficient and unsustainable built world sector using Generative AI and automation. These systems can optimise design, improve efficiency, and reduce errors in construction. Bricklaying robots in Europe, from firms like Monumental, work alongside humans to improve productivity and safety. Yet such advancements require deep collaboration between tech companies, construction firms and the investors backing these technologies to introduce tools that materially shift the dial.

4. Electrifying industry: Industrial heat generation releases massive carbon emissions which need to be tackled. One solution would be to mandate the electrification of industrial processes. Industrial heatpumps and electrical heating solutions will target industrial energy consumption at the lower temperature range, where there is substantial demand. For higher temperature applications that are today predominantly supported by natural gas, coal and biomass, there are emerging thermal storage solutions that can make use of green energy to charge and discharge high temperature heat from companies like Kraftblock.

5. Greener banks: Banks already play a critical and trusted role in financing the built environment and they can help drive the energy transition by acting as a key bridge between public and private capital. Whether that’s through their own partnerships with installers, connecting solution providers to utilities and real estate funds, or instilling trust among consumers. Governments also play a role, through regulations, policies and incentives, that can encourage banks to ‘green’ their loan portfolios. This will not only help boost investments in energy-efficient real estate and green technologies but will help the banks mitigate the energy risk of having property or loan portfolios.

6. Energy for all: Investing into the technologies and policies needed to decarbonise the built world can also have a substantial impact on society. Not just in terms of fuelling economic growth through employment and returns, but in levelling the playing field. A staggering 41 million Europeans were unable to keep their homes warm in 2022. Making energy-efficient housing more accessible and affordable is therefore key, especially for low-income communities. Leaning on tech to retrofit buildings, promote smart meter usage and expanding access to renewable energy will also significant societal gains. Gains that require governments, solution providers, and property developers to be on the same page.

Heat pumps are only the tip of a very large iceberg when it comes to decarbonising our built world. Technology will be essential to address the problems caused by the built world. But long-term changes – that cut across political parties – are needed to accelerate change and to maximise the value of public and private investment in this area.

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Westminster have announced plans to become the UK’s first net zero city and although this will be good for the planet, it’s not good news for future developments.

Foster & Partners, a global studio for architecture, engineering, urban and landscape design, have submitted plans to demolish and rebuild an eight-storey building in Mayfair, however they are set to be refused by Westminster council next week as the borough targets its goal to become a ‘retrofit-first’ city.

The proposal details plans to demolish 18-19 Saville Row and replace it with a new build office of roughly the same size, aiming to address issues with the existing building which developer The Pollen Estate believes are ‘increasingly rendering [it] obsolete’.

However, Westminster’s planning officers have said the redevelopment of the site is ‘not considered to be justified in sustainability or circular economy terms.’

Against this backdrop, Foster & Partners’ proposals for a retrofit of a former Fenwick department store, which is also located in Mayfair and closed last month, have been recommended for approval ahead of the same planning committee meeting.

The two recommendations come as the council is running a public consultation on its plans to significantly strengthen its planning policies on retrofit aiming to discourage developers from pursuing new build schemes.

If these plans are approved, developers could face carbon offsetting payments up to nine time higher than current levels and would be required to prioritise re-use options on existing buildings before considering demolishing them.

The local authority’s planning officers said the Savile Row scheme ‘fails to adhere to circular economy principles and principles of sustainable design, both of which prioritise the retention, refitting and refurbishment of existing buildings’.

The officers’ report added it would ‘fail to help transition London to a low carbon circular economy through generating unjustified waste and carbon emissions’.

The planning committee are set to meet on 2nd April, when they will make a decision on the two applications.

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The leading UK construction company has held a topping out ceremony to mark a key stage in the project to deliver new facilities at Beacon Barracks.

Henry Brothers have been building a new, two-storey facility for the Squadron – the only British Army unit permanently assigned to NATO – which is set to move from Dorset to Beacon Barracks near Stafford.

The facility in question will include new offices, conference rooms, a reception area, workshops, garaging, storage rooms, welfare facilities and mechanical and electrical plant rooms. In addition, to ensure the new development meets sustainability requirements, it will also feature solar panels on the roof.

As well as constructing this new development, Henry Brothers are also working to create a single-storey satellite communications building, which, as a Deployable Communication Module, has a role to install and control strategic communication and information systems supporting a deployed NATO headquarters.

Personnel at the topping out ceremony for the new facilities, which cost around £22m included representatives from NATO, 280 (NATO) Signal Squadron, the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), Beacon Barracks, contractor Henry Brothers Construction, project manager Mott MacDonald and multi-disciplinary design consultants Pick Everard.

Ian Taylor, MD of Henry Brothers Construction, said: ‘We are very pleased to see this significant milestone being reached on the new facility that Henry Brothers Construction is delivering at Beacon Barracks for 280 (NATO) Signal Squadron. The squadron plays an important role in NATO, and we are proud to support our armed forces.

‘Henry Brothers has worked in partnership with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) to deliver many improvements and new developments over the years. It’s great to see one of our current projects proceeding well and on track for completion next year, providing 280 (NATO) Signal Squadron with a new base to relocate to from Dorset.’

Steve Cummings, operations director at Pick Everard, who also helped design the project, said: ‘This is an exciting project to help deliver, supporting our troops as well as NATO. We’re delighted to be working collaboratively with Henry Brothers as well as the Ministry of Defence, to design facilities that operate with efficiency and security front of mind, utilising the latest techniques to assist the 280 (NATO) Signal Squadron’s aims.

‘It’s been a great pleasure to help reach this important milestone collectively, combining expertise across the construction supply chain and build on our strong reputation in the defence sector. We look forward to playing an active role as the project progresses through its development stages.’

Image: Henry Brothers 

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