Property Week reports that Berkeley has appointed Michael Dobson as chairman. Dobson will join the board and nomination committee immediately as an Independent non-executive director. He will assume the role of non-executive chairman of the company and chairman of the nomination committee when Glyn Barker steps down at the group’s AGM on 6 September. Barker was appointed chairman in July 2020 for a period of two years to oversee the transition of the board following the death of the company’s founder and previous chairman, Tony Pidgley.

Property Week reports that the property industry has reacted with mixed views to the prime minster’s announcement that he will extend the Right to Buy scheme, where council tenants can buy their own homes. Reports have emerged that the PM is preparing to confirm the extension for housing association tenants and review the mortgage market to reduce the deposit needed to purchase a council home. Housing secretary Michael Gove told ITV news the scheme should not deplete social housing stock, insisting that one council home should be built for every one that is sold off. He told Sky News: “One of the things we’re looking at is a way people can save explicitly for home ownership. We are looking specifically at a saving vehicle in order that people [on benefits] can save for that deposit.” “It will come from the overall parcel, the overall envelope of government spending. We expect that we will cap the number who will be able to benefit from this initially, and then it will grow over time.” Some in the property industry have welcomed the news, claiming it will help drive home ownership.

Property Week report that in a highly critical report, the PAC said the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) had finalised the principles for awarding the first round in its flagship £4.8bn levelling-up fund only once it knew the identities and scores of the 170 shortlisted bidders. Dame Meg Hillier MP, chair of the PAC, called the process “partisan”, adding that the lack of transparency was a clear concern and that the department had “past form” in its grant handouts. She told Property Week: “We raised this with the Town’s Fund; it was quite evident that there was some definite intervention at that stage.” Last year, the PAC raised queries about the majority of the 45 places receiving £1bn Town’s Fund grants were in Conservative constituencies. “Everything’s political in a sense,” Hillier added. “It is obviously inevitable that any government running for election will have its manifesto promises. But the question is whether the politics then gets into the process, and the process needs to be fair and transparent.”

Property Week reports that the office market has been judged as having the worst ESG performance in the real estate sector, whilst industrial properties are seen to be leading the way, according to new research from Deepki. Property Week can reveal that Deepki has found just 44% of the industry see office real estate as having a positive ESG performance, whilst logistics was just behind with a score of 47%. The industrial (61%), leisure (61%) and retail (60%) sectors boasted the highest number of positive responses, according to Deepki’s research. The ESG data intelligence firm had surveyed 250 European pension fund managers in the UK, as well as Germany, France, Spain and Italy, with a combined AUM of €402bn, and asked them to rate the ESG performance of eight commercial property sectors. Respondents rated the sectors from ‘very good’ to ‘very poor’ before Deepki calculated an average ‘total positive rating’. Close behind the two front runners, the care home and social housing sectors both scored a 53% positive rating, while hotels saw 52% of respondents describe it as having a positive performance. In the survey, logistics received the most negative views of its ESG performance (23%), while just 15% of respondents rated office properties as performing ‘very positively’ in the ESG department.

The Guardian reports that Londoners are working from home mainly to avoid the time and cost of travelling to the office, according to a study that shows most believe they are unlikely to return to five days in the office again. Cuts to public transport and the high cost of fares act as a major deterrent to workers making daily trips to the office, while traffic jams and the soaring cost of petrol and diesel, which hit a fresh peak this week, make commuting by car unattractive, the survey found. Only 10% of the workers said they thought they would return to the office full-time compared with 73% who told researchers from King’s College London that working from home at least one day a week would be a permanent feature of modern life.

City A.M. reports that Titan housebuilder Barratt is planning to begin a search for a new chairman, with City grandee John Allan to step down. According to reports by Sky News, Allan, who also chairs the country’s largest supermarket, Tesco, is readying to hand over the reins of the construction giant. Barratt has reportedly asked headhunters at Russell Reynolds Associates to find a successor to Allan. The recruitment process is unlikely to be completed until next year, Sky News reported. However, a source told the news organisation that the company’s annual meeting next year appeared to be a logical timeframe. It comes as some housebuilders in the UK have expressed disdain for a £3bn building safety levy, in addition to other contributions to repair unsafe buildings.