Category: News Section

Manchester set to be first City to ‘earn back’ national tax revenues

Manchester Building Surveyors – Manchester is set to become the first city to be handed the freedom to reinvest its own national tax revenues under the Government’s latest proposed ‘City Deal’.

The deal will include the creation of a ‘revolving Infrastructure Fund’. This will allow Greater Manchester to ‘earn back’ a portion of the tax it generates by investing £1.2bn in infrastructure, on a payment-by-results basis. The Government estimates that up to £30m could be earned back in this way.

Read the whole article by clicking here.

Bristol Council releases solar property map

Bristol Building Surveyors – Bristol City Council has recently released a map which you can use to check your property’s suitability for solar panels. A user can simply type in their address and see a graphic of their property and the surrounding area, revealing an estimated potential for solar generation between ‘limited’ and ‘very good’.

Further details are listed, including estimated system size, electricity generation and CO2 savings.

Bristol Landlord fined for Flyposting

bristolbuildingsurveyors.co.uk -The landlord of a pub, the Black Swan in Easton, Bristol, has been fined £11,000 for ‘flyposting’.

The punishment is for putting up posters on lamposts, street hoardings and other items of street furniture without permission. The council reputedly removes thousands of posters every year, and had highlighted the areas the landlord, Mr Melford, had illegally installed the posters, giving him an opportunity to take them down. Having been ignored, court proceedings were brought. Mr Melford did not attend the hearing.

In case you missed it….. Star Ship Enterprise set to be lost in Devastating Divorce

Hidden away within a block of flats in Hinckley, Leicestershire, is the product of ten years’ hard work, over £4000 and the estimated equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of labour costs. Mr Tony Alleyne has spent a large part of his life lovingly recreating the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise in his one bedroom flat and he looks set to lose it all in a messy divorce.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Lloyds TSB research shows £48,000 extra to live in a spa town

Spa towns like Ilkley in West Yorkshire, which boasted the highest premium of all, Boston Spa in Lincolnshire and Bath in North Somerset, have been shown to have signficantly higher house prices.

The report by Lloyds TSB indicated the spa town house prices were around 27% or £48,123 higher than neighbouring towns, averaging at £275,397 last year. Spa town homes now cost typically 8.3 times gross annual earnings.

Second firm goes down during £28m Ebbw Vale project

Following the closure of MJN Colston just a week ago, Bristol based firm All Mass Cladding Systems has been placed into administration.

Both firms were working on Leadbitter’s £28m Blaenau Gwent Colege project in Ebbw Vale and up to 25 people are now thought to have lost their jobs. The company reputedly turnedover around £10m per year.

More information is available here.

Liverpool opts for Directly Elected Mayor

Following our article on the subject in February’s newsletter (which can be found here), Liverpool has now decided to elect a Mayor for the city.

The move follows the striking of a so called ‘City Deal’ which will grant Liverpool considerably greater power over its own future. This deal is the first of its kind and includes such measures as the provision of a single investment pot of funds and a new enterprise zone for North Liverpool.

More can be read at this link.

Birmingham Council to consider plans to build 400 homes for market rent

Birminghambuildingsurveyors – Birmingham City Council is planning to develop 400 homes for market rent on public land in partnership with a housing association and developer.

The cabinet will receive a report next week outlining proposals to develop the homes on the St Luke’s estate in Highgate through an innovative partnership with housing association WM Housing Group and developer Willmott Dixon.

The development is understood to use a new funding model where the developer and council will both take an equity stake in the homes, with the aim of selling them on to an institutional investor within a five to 10 year time frame.

Further information is available from the source, here.

Cardiff contractors set to shut 26 years after opening

CardiffBuildingSurveyors.co.uk – Cardiff concrete floor specialist Mike Amodeo (Contractors) is set to close after 26 years of running and a repertoire that includes Cardiff City’s Football Stadium.

The firm, along with Mike Amodeo Group and Mike Amodeo Haulage, is expected to go into voluntary liquidation at a creditors’ meeting next week.

The meetings for creditors of the three companies will take place on 28 February at the Cardiff offices of corporate recovery firm Begbies Traynor.

More information can be found here.