A weekly round up of the latest property news from the Central London boroughs

City of London

PW reports that Mitsubishi Estate London has secured planning permission from the  City of London Corporation for its revised plans for a 50-storey office tower at 6-8 Bishopsgate and 150 Leadenhall Street. Approval has been secured for a 50-storey office tower on the corner site – with retail units on the ground floor and a viewing gallery at its summit – with a distinctive ‘stacked blocks’ design. The property will provide over 570,000 sq ft of space to let.

PW `reports that Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in the City of London has achieved the highest ever design-stage BREEAM rating of any major office development. The Bloomberg Place building, which opens later this month, has achieved an ‘outstanding’ rating with a 98.5% score – the highest ever achieved. Compared to a typical office building, the new Bloomberg building’s environmental strategies deliver a 73% saving in water consumption and a 35% saving in energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions.

EG reports that US law firm Sidley Austin has selected TH Real Estate’s 60-70 St Mary Axe, EC3, for its new London HQ. The deal will be the first letting for the 332,000 sq ft building, also known as the Can of Ham, which is due for completion in 2018. The firm is in talks to take 120,000 sq ft at a rent in the high £60s per sq ft. Knight Frank was instructed at the start of the year to find the firm a new of office. GM Real Estate and JLL are leasing agents on 60-70 St Mary Axe.

Hackney

PW reports that Whitbread has completed a £52m forward funding deal for its new hub by Premier Inn hotel in Shoreditch, East London. The deal with an un-named UK pension fund, which was advised by Gerald Eve, follows three other recent forward funding deals on new hotels at Kings Cross, Westminster and Farringdon. The Shoreditch hotel is already under construction and the yield to the pension fund on completion of the development is about 3.9%. BNP Paribas Real Estate advised Whitbread.

Wandsworth

EG reports that Taylor Wimpey and Wandsworth Council have unveiled new plans and formalised their joint venture for the redevelopment of the 32‐acre Winstanley Estate in Clapham Junction, south‐west London. Consultations on the plans are now under way and a planning application is expected to be submitted next summer. The regeneration of the 1960s Winstanley and York Road estates will provide more than 2,200 new homes alongside retail and leisure uses and is one of the largest estate regeneration opportunities in London. All 530 secure council tenants are guaranteed a newly built home on their estate, along with all owner‐occupiers, while the council is building 107 more social rent homes on the site.

Westminster

PW reports that office take-up in London’s West End market in the month of September totalled 857,259 sq ft – bringing take-up in the third quarter to 1.62m sq ft, the highest quarterly total on record, according to Savills. Leasing activity in Q3 2017 brings total take-up in the year to date to 3.99m sq ft, already surpassing 2016’s total annual take-up of 3.97m sq ft and placing the West End in good stead to exceed the record 4.3m sq ft amassed in 2015. Key deals include Aegis‘ pre-let of the entire 310,000 sq ft at British Land’s 1 Triton Square; The Boston Consulting Group pre-letting 123,500 sq ft at 80 Charlotte Street and Spotify acquiring 104,133 sq ft at The Adelphi.

PW reports that Westbrook Partners is about to unveil ambitious plans to add 150 flats to Dolphin Square and upgrade the entire 1930s estate. Following year-long consultations with Westminster City Council and residents, the US fund manager, which has owned the existing 1,229 flats since 2006, is to submit a planning application shortly to add apartments to the roof, rebuild the leisure facilities and extend the gardens. Eminent architect Eric Parry has drawn up plans to add four to five floors to Dolphin House, the lower serviced-apartment block to the hidden north side of the square. The plans will also bring the entire roof to one level by adding an additional floor to the southern block facing the Thames and the two blocks on the east and west sides. In July 2014, the US fund won a four-year legal battle to take control of the freehold of the 7.5-acre site from Friends Life. Westbrook refused to comment on its plans but it is understood a wider public consultation will be launched at the end of this month that will reveal the plans, just ahead of the application being lodged. It is not thought Westminster council has any objections.

PW reports that Grosvenor Europe has completed the sale of 10 Grosvenor Street in London’s West End to a Hong Kong investor for £152m. The group, on behalf of Grosvenor London Office Fund (GLOF), has sold the long leasehold interest in the asset for a yield of 3.7%. Grosvenor initially acquired a 50% stake in the 65,000 sq ft building on behalf of GLOF in 2007 and purchased the remaining 50% in 2014 from Hammerson. Grosvenor was advised by Knight Frank. The buyer was advised by Michael Elliott.