Camden

Construction Enquirer reports that the public spending watchdog has called for an urgent total design rethink of the Euston terminus of HS2 as costs soar.A new National Audit Office report into the station warns that forecast project costs have continued to balloon despite attempts to simplify the project. The original £2.6bn station budget is now reckoned to have soared to £4.8bn, even with the cost-cutting decision to trim back platforms from 11 to 10. Spending to date on advanced works has already hit £548m.

City of London

Property Week reports that Malaysian construction firm Gamuda Berhad has bought Winchester House, the current London headquarters of Deutsche Bank, for £257m, with plans to refurbish the office block and add an additional 200,000 sq ft. Gamuda partnered with UK investor Castleforge Partners to complete the deal for the eight-storey building, in one of the largest property deals in the City of London this year.

City of Westminster

Planning permission was granted on Tuesday for the £571 million major regeneration of three major sites in the Church Street neighbourhood, following community support for the  scheme. The council-led Church Street Regeneration Programme will deliver up to 1,120 new homes and will ensure the re-provision of all existing council homes with new higher quality council homes for social rent with affordable homes making up over 50% of the homes delivered in the scheme.

The Architects Journal reports that Richard Rogers’ 29-year-old Channel 4 headquarters in Horseferry Road, central London, has been given a Grade II listing. The building, described by Historic England as ‘an elegant work of the High-Tech movement’, has been repeatedly named among The Twentieth Century Society’s top 10 heritage buildings most at risk from demolition, redevelopment or neglect.

The Evening Standard reports that demand for office space is outstripping supply in the West End, but this is not the case anywhere else in London. Statistics from Colliers found that the amount of office space occupied in the West End increased by over 1 million sq ft in 2022, the first increase since the pandemic, but it decreased by over 1.6 million sq ft in London as a whole.

WCC reports that people have given their support to making the Covent Garden traffic management scheme permanent. The main aim of the scheme is to improve overall amenity and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Over 640 residents, businesses and visitors responded to the latest consultation in December 2022, with 66% of respondents voting favourably to make the scheme permanent.

Property Week reports that Maslow Capital has agreed a £114m loan for Union Property Development to redevelop an existing purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) site to create a 356-bed accommodation. The scheme will also provide social and well-being amenities, including a residents lounge, individual and group study areas, laptop bar, gym, laundry and internal cycle storage facilities.

Hackney

Building Design reports that Faulkner Browns has worked up proposals for a new teaching pool that will sit beside the heated Olympic-size outdoor pool at London Fields Lido in Hackney. The practice’s scheme is set to be lodged for planning in the coming weeks after responses from a pre-application public consultation on the plans have been evaluated. The consultation launched on 3 March and closed yesterday.

Kensington & Chelsea

EG reports that an office block offering scope for a £100m GDV development in Ladbroke Grove W10 has been put up for sale. Savills has been appointed to seek offers of more than £18m for the freehold of the vacant four-storey property. The owner is offshore company Frasco Investment Holdings. The site, at 136-142 Bramley Road, is being marketed with potential for redevelopment into commercial, life sciences, purpose-built student accommodation, co-living, education or residential uses. The GDV of those uses ranges from £80m to £100m.

Property week reports that private equity firm Oakley Capital has agreed a pre-let deal with property group Grosvenor to take all 26,500 sq ft of Holbein Gardens, a west London office building. Holbein Gardens is a redevelopment and one-storey extension of a four-storey 1980s office building near Sloane Square, that is Grosvenor’s first net zero office development. The building, which will be powered by renewable energy, will be occupied by Oakley Capital from early next year.

Southwark

Construction Enquirer reports that developer Regal London has revised plans for its landmark Old Kent Road scheme in the capital switching from flats to hundreds of student rooms and affordable homes. The proposed Devonshire Place development at a site opposite the proposed new Bakerloo Line station will now include 220 affordable homes and 910 student bedrooms.In addition, 600 sq m of commercial and community areas will be delivered across four buildings ranging in height from 15 to 28 storeys. Regal has now bought the site and gone out to public consultation ahead of submitting plans to Southwark later this year.

Construction Enquirer reports that developer Sellar has dropped plans for a London hotel and flats project in favour of now building a large student scheme on the Southwark site. It now plans to develop a 444-room student accommodation scheme at the Harper Road and Borough High Street site. It is the second developer in a week to switch plans for private flats over to student rooms in the Capital.

General

Property Week reports that global real estate adviser CBRE has appointed Miles Auger as head of hotels to drive performance and execute its UK strategy across its business lines including valuations, advisory, and capital markets. He has over 20 years of experience in the real estate sector, 13 of which have been with CBRE, focused solely on the hotels market. Most recently, Auger was head of hotel valuations, UK, at CBRE and was responsible for leading, undertaking and coordinating hotel valuation projects.