A weekly round up of the latest planning and property news from the central London boroughs

Camden

City of London

Property Week reports that Aviva Investors and Allianz real estate have formed a joint venture to develop two offices in the City of London with a combined GDV of £500m. The JV will develop 1 Liverpool Street and 101 Moorgate in the City of London into a pair of mixed-use retail and office buildings. 1 Liverpool Street is opposite the eastern entrance of the new Elizabeth line at Liverpool Street station and above the new Crossrail infrastructure at Liverpool Street station, which will complete the west end of Liverpool Street. Once complete, it will provide 176,000 sq ft of leasable office and retail space, spread over the ground and upper ten floors. 101 Moorgate is near London Wall and opposite the entrance to Finsbury Circus. It will deliver over 73,000 sq ft of office and retail space over its ground and six upper floors.

Property Week reports that British Land signs 238,000 sq ft across London offices. Since its half-year results in November last year, nine firms have taken a total of 125,000 sq ft of office space at Broadgate. These include customer-engagement platform Braze, which has signed for 49,000 sq ft at Exchange House, and proprietary trading firm Maven Securities, which will occupy 38,000 sq ft at 155 Bishopsgate. Darren Richards, head of real estate at British Land, said: “As companies consider future ways of working, demand is focussed on the very best space, with an emphasis on sustainability, wellness, shared and flexible space and excellent transport connections. Our London campuses deliver this and as a result, we’re seeing excellent leasing activity to innovative businesses in growth sectors, at rents ahead of ERV.

Hackney

Property Week reports that located on Warburton Street, under Hackney’s railway arches, London Fields Brewery offers a custom-designed 15-hectolitre Kasper Schulz brew kit installed in 2019 during a £2m investment programme, and has a 3,000-hectolitre on-site capacity. It also has a taproom licensed until midnight. Carlsberg Marston’s closed the site in December last year and announced its intention to sell both the brewery and the brand. The move came four years after Carlsberg Marston’s originally bought the site as a joint venture with Brooklyn Brewery. Opened in 2011, London Fields Brewery was the first commercial brewery to open in Hackney in more than a century.

Kensington and Chelsea

The BBC reports that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich says he is planning to sell the club. In a statement on the Premier League club’s website, businessman Abramovich said he had made the “incredibly difficult decision” which “pains” him. The Russian will not ask “for any loans to be repaid” and said proceeds of the sale would be donated to war victims. Abramovich had said on Saturday he would give “stewardship and care” of Chelsea to its foundation trustees following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That led to speculation Abramovich – who has loaned the club more than £1.5bn – would put Chelsea up for sale, and billionaire Hansjorg Wyss told Swiss newspaper Blick on Wednesday that he had been offered the chance to buy the club. Wyss said Abramovich wanted “to get rid of Chelsea quickly” after the threat of sanctions was raised in Parliament.

Property Week reports that an MP has told parliament that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is hastily selling his most valuable London properties to avoid potential financial sanctions from the government. On Tuesday, Labour MP Chris Bryant said that Abramovich was “terrified of being sanctioned, which is why he is going to sell his home tomorrow, and another flat as well”. The properties Bryant is referring to are understood to be Abramovich’s five-bed mansion at Kensington Palace Gardens, which is valued at more than £150m, while the flat could refer to a three-storey penthouse at Chelsea Waterfront, which was bought in 2018 for £22m, according to the Times. Bryant, who is head of the parliamentary standards committee, used parliamentary privilege to suggest that Abramovich was taking steps to avoid his assets being frozen amid growing pressure following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Property Week reports that Big Mamma Group is set to open a new restaurant at the former HSBC bank at 92 Kensington High Street, west London. A private landlord client of Hanover Green Retail has agreed a 15-year lease with the restaurant group for the 6,200 sq ft property, which comprises ground, lower-ground mezzanine and first floors. The restaurant group operates other London eateries including Gloria in Shoreditch and Ave Mario in Covent Garden. Graham Waite of Waites Legal acted for Big Mamma.

Lambeth

Property Week reports that Skyroom has revealed plans to develop more than 111 homes in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Waltham Forest with funding from the Key Worker Homes Fund. The homes will be created in a five-storey residential building in Lambeth, and several low-rise residential buildings within an estate in Waltham Forest. The £100m fund, launched by Skyroom in March 2021, offers London’s local authorities and housing associations technical expertise and capital to create airspace developments above buildings in their portfolio. More than 40 sites were submitted to the fund’s board of commissioners for consideration. The commissioners — which include Professor Sadie Morgan, Sir Steve Bullock, and Baroness Doreen Lawrence — selected the most impactful developments, defined by the number of new homes that can be delivered, their affordability and the benefits to residents and local communities.

Westminster

The Industry Fashion reports that London Business Alliance unveils five year plan to help West End “thrive”. Non-profit organisation the Heart of London Business Alliance (HOLBA) has revealed its five year plan to help the West End recover from the pandemic and thrive. HOLBA, which serves as a voice for 500 businesses and 100 property owners in the Piccadilly and St James’s, and Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus areas, has outlined 40 potential projects as part of its strategy, five of which are of “immediate priorities” designed to “preserve and enhance the unique character of the central London area.”A key focus for the project, named The West End 2027, will be the development of public spaces, including the transformation of Green Park to make it more accommodating to Piccadilly visitors, and St Martin’s Lane and Sackville Street.

Property Week reports that Westminster Council says it wants to rid central London of ‘candy and tat shops’. Westminster City Council has outlined its intention to rid central London’s Oxford Street of “questionable candy and tat shops” as a part of a £150m rejuvenation. Rachael Robathan, leader of the council, tonight said “Oxford Street is Europe’s hardest hit street” by Covid and that the decline will continue without a serious intervention.

General

The Evening Standard reports that boomerang buyers push property prices up at fastest rate since before Brexit vote. Asking prices rose in all but one London boroughs this month, hitting an average of £667,000 at the highest rate of growth in the six years since the Brexit vote. The capital saw the biggest jump in home buyers of any UK region as the average price tag rose 7.3 per cent on a year ago according to Rightmove’s monthly house price data. The end of pandemic restrictions and reopening of offices are luring buyers back to London after two years of dwindling interest, leading to price rises following a Christmas lull.

The Financial Times reports that British Land, one of the UK’s biggest landlords, said it was planning to axe its rental contract with Gazprom’s global trading arm based in central London as a growing number of businesses seek to cut ties with the Russian state energy company over the war in Ukraine. Gazprom Marketing & Trading (GM&T), the Russian gas giant’s global energy trading business, is based in London and occupies the top floors of 20 Triton Street, a block on the east side of Regent’s Park. British Land said it would try to quit the agreement as soon as possible. “We have an historical contractual agreement with Gazprom at Regent’s Place and will exit this arrangement as soon as we legally can,” said British Land, adding that it was shocked and saddened by events in Ukraine.

Property Week reports that Housing secretary Michael Gove is set to scrap the “most radical proposals” from the 2020 planning white paper. Gove told a group of MPs at a private meeting that he had decided not to proceed with a major separate piece of planning legislation to put the reforms into law, according to The Telegraph. “There is no standalone planning bill,” the paper reported he had said. Just 18 months ago, prime minister Boris Johnson promised “radical [planning] reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War”. The government’s U-turn would see the idea of “growth areas”, in which planning approval is granted automatically, scrapped.

Property Week reports that Government attempts to clamp down on “dirty money” from Russia have met with a mixed response from the industry and transparency campaigners. British Property Federation chief executive Melanie Leech broadly welcomed the measures, calling them “an important step in making ownership of UK property more transparent”. Marc Schneiderman, sales director at Arlington Residential, also welcomed the proposals. “Anything that leads to transparency is a good thing and clearly, as agents, we have an obligation to carry out checks on our buyers and sellers,” he said. “Anything that helps us in doing those checks, such as a register of beneficial owners, is going to be helpful.” However, Transparency International expressed concerns about potential loopholes in the legislation. “An 18-month commencement and transition period is far too long and risks massive levels of asset flight,” the group said, calling on the government to implement “transitional provisions” to stop property from being sold before the register comes into force.

Property Week reports that Levelling-up minister Neil O’Brien has insisted that the government’s Levelling Up White Paper does not mean London will be “levelled down”. In a parliamentary Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee meeting this week, members grilled O’Brien and Andy Haldane, head of the cabinet’s levelling-up taskforce, on how deprived areas of London would benefit from the government’s levelling-up agenda. Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall, said: “London is the most unequal region because of high housing costs and high levels of poverty. We cannot level down London to level up the rest of the country. Investing in London will bring that prosperity right across the country.”