Category: In case you missed it…

Brighton to house homeless in shipping containers

Brightonbuildingsurveyors.co.uk – In a clever move to reduce their pressing homeless list, Brighton has taken inspiration from a Dutch solution – converting old shipping containers into temporary homes.

36 converted shipping containers to be installed in the city centre has been submitted to Brighton and Hove City Council by housing charity, Brighton Housing Trust, and local developers, QED. The response is reported to have been overwhelmingly positive, and the solution may see further interest in cities across the country as a result.

Can a shipping container form a structuraly sound home? Ask your local surveyor.

Man in Cardiff reduces own home to rubble with sledgehammer

cardiffbuildingsurveyors.co.uk – A brother has demolished his own home in Cardiff over a will dispute that has dragged on 7 years.

Reaching the end of his wits, Mr McGuire took a sledgehammer to his semi-detached house to demolish the extensions and additions he had made to it during an 8 year residency (for which he had reputedly invested £200,000).  Police stood by powerless as he destroyed the private property.

If you have a property issue in Cardiff, put down the sledgehammer and call your local Chartered Surveyor to assist and represent you.

Online study says move over Rio – Brighton is best

Brightonbuildingsurveyors.co.uk – Unlike Rio de Janeiro, world famous for its sandy beach and tanned locals, Brighton is more a case of pasty white, but endlessly enthusiastic, bathers and pebbles galore. Nonetheless, Lonely Planet has found Brighton to be amongst the world’s best cities with beaches – on a list to provider holidaymakers with a compromise between city breaks and beach holidays.

In Case You Missed It…… String of deaths leaves Britain’s most expensive house up for sale

PropertySurveying.co.uk

In our monthly newsletter, we highlighted a story concerning Britain’s most expensive home. A vast mansion in London with 45 bedrooms, a £300m price tag and a macabre past…

Read the rest of the article by clicking here

Council Spends unbelievable £26,000……on coffee……in one year

Stoke on Trent Surveyors – In the latest in revelations over ridiculous council spending, Stoke on Trent council has recently been shown to have spent a startling £26,000 last year….on coffee and other hot beverages. Its 44 councillors consumed 10,800 drinks in the year and drinks were also bought for guests and visitors.

Broken down, that is £500 a week for a council tasked with achieving £35.6m of savings.

China’s ‘white elephants’ litter the landscape

Property Surveying

Much has been made of the failed construction projects in Ireland and Spain that lie dormant for lack of funding of consumer interest, but the scale of those failures is nothing compared to the huge undertakings that have been left mothballed in China.

Whole theme parks, shopping centres, cities and even a town made to look like old England (cobbled streets and Tudor housing included, in the style of Ashford or Canterbury) are more reminiscent of the tumbleweed occupied ghost towns of the wild west than the thriving  hubs they were designed to be.

Read about the many projects that growth orientated China has consigned to the history books here.

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.