18 Mar 2014
New Builds Booming!
Housebuilder Berkeley Group has said it expects to complete 30% more homes this year than during the 2007 market peak.
It has credited the government’s Help to Buy scheme with boosting the property market and speeding up the number of new homes being built.
The firm’s forecast comes shortly after the chancellor’s decision to extend the equity loan scheme for new homes until 2020, in England at least.
Shares in UK housebuilders rose sharply on the news on Monday.
An extra £6bn would be put into the English Help to Buy scheme, George Osborne said at the weekend, allowing a further 120,000 new homes to be built.
The extension, from its current end date of December 2016, will be confirmed in Wednesday’s Budget.
Berkeley Group said its forward sales of new homes were worth more than £1.9bn by the end of February, up from £1.75bn at the end of October last year.
It said most of the demand was coming from London and the south of England.
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18 Mar 2014
massive new building framework
Firms of all sizes are being invited to prequalify for a massive new building framework covering council jobs in London.
The London Construction Programme Works and Major Works framework will be open to all 33 London Boroughs and is due to come into force at the start of 2015.
It has been given an estimated pipeline of work of anywhere between £1bn and £4bn over the next four years.
But as an untested arrangement, it is still open to question how much the cash-strapped public sector will be able to deliver.
A meet the buyer event will be staged on the 10 March to set out plans for four-year framework, which is broken down into 30 lots covering five London sub-regions.
Each region will be banded into projects up to £1m, £1m-£5m and over £5m, covering new-build housing or separate lots for other building like schools and health care projects.
Eight contractors are intended to be included on each lot in each sub-region except the £100,000 to £1m lots where up to 10 contractors may be appointed.
