Hampshire Trust

The market for land in London has returned to pre-recession levels, with international investors ploughing a further £5 billion into the capital’s residential market.

The cash injection will help to develop as many as 10,000 new homes in the city, and the interest has resulted in the price of land in London increasing dramatically.

Rob Perrins, the chief executive of the largest housebuilder in London, The Berkeley Group, said, “we are now seeing a lot more of these people at land auctions and it is pushing up the cost of getting hold of sites which already have planning consent and can be developed quickly.”

The rental market is set to boom and rents have grown solidly throughout the recession. It is predicted that as many as one in five households will be private rented accommodation by 2015, while the current rate in one household in seven.

In fact that London property market has come out reasonably unscathed from period where the housing and commercial property market has struggled elsewhere in the UK.

Much of the development has been in niche high-end residential development, as demand from overseas buyers is currently very high and supply is failing to keep up with demand, driving up prices.

The opening of the major commercial and residential development, One Hyde Park, has caused quite a stir this week.

This development is to be the home of the most expensive apartment in the world – priced at £140 million. However, one of the biggest surprises was the news that it is selling the retail outlets on the site for just a 3 per cent yield.

Just £50 million is being paid for the retail units, representing one of the lowest yields outside the West End. The development firm, Project Grande, which is backed by the Prime Minister of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, is going to be repaying £900 million of the £1 billion of development finance it received from the banks on opening.

The developers are reportedly able to do this as a result of successful pre-sales of the incredibly expensive apartments in the building, which stands close to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge, and overlooks Hyde Park.

The retail units are to be taken by luxury brands Rolex, McLaren and the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank.

According to new figures the construction industry is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and fewer jobs are being put on hold.

Research by business intelligence firm Glenigan shows that only 198 construction projects were put on hold in May, which is down from 731 during May 2009.

The figures also show that May 2010 was a vast improvement on April 2010 when 409 projects with a total value of £1.7 billion were put on the shelf.

The researchers found that several high profile commercial construction projects had started up again, after being put on hold last year, which shows an improvement in conditions in the industry.

It was also discovered that the value of stalled office and social housing projects were only a third of the value of those being put on hold a year ago.

The outlook is optimistic, particularly in the commercial sector. However, with recent government budget cuts, the public sector construction industry could see an increase in projects being out on hold. A clearer picture of this should emerge shortly, when more information is available on where government spending will continue.

A new piece of research from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has found that a third of nurses claim they have not been able to access necessary training courses.

Only 55.8 per cent say they feel up-to-date in terms of their training and development, while 33.8 per cent said they have had to pay for their own training in the past in order to learn vital skills.

The RCN’s Janet Davies said, “Nurses are carrying out more and more tasks, but we can see they are starting to be hit by a double whammy – staff shortages and a lack of training.”

These kinds of training problems could lead to an increase in cases of clinical negligence, which in turn could lead to expensive compensation payouts from the NHS. As a result, aside from risking the health and lives of patients, cutting corners when it comes to training nurses is likely to be a false economy for the NHS.

Recent figures from Civitas suggest that the NHS has accrued debts of £10 million, which means further cutbacks could be on the cards for nurses.