People on estate facing demolition for HS2 could struggle to find new homes

By Helen Pidd

Government report finds that residents of Shimmer estate may not receive adequate compensation to acquire similar properties in light of shortage

Opponents of HS2 say engineers did not even realise that the newly built Shimmer estate, Mexborough, existed when they planned the route. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/for the Guardian

The government has said that residents of a brand new housing estate facing demolition to make way for the HS2 railway could struggle to find replacement homes nearby.

More than 130 families living on the Shimmer estate in Mexborough, South Yorkshire, may have to leave their homes after the government decided that the HS2 train line should go right through their neighbourhood. Some only moved in days before the route was proposed in July last year.


They are among 540 homeowners within 100 metres of the new Yorkshire leg of the line who potentially face being forced out of their homes, according to research by the Yorkshire HS2 action groups, who oppose the route. The campaigners argue that an earlier proposal, which would have seen the line go to Meadowhall shopping centre, north-east of the city centre, rather than follow the M18 motorway to the city centre, would have resulted in only 296 residential demolitions.

Opponents to HS2 claim that engineers didn’t even know that Shimmer existed when they planned the route, chosen by transport secretary Chris Grayling on Monday. Construction of the estate began only in 2011 and it doesn’t appear on Google Maps or most satellite navigation systems.

Grayling said only 16 homes would have to be demolished to make way for a viaduct to carry the high-speed line, but residents believe the whole estate is doomed. Many feel that they are not being offered a fair price by the government to sell up and fear that they will find themselves in negative equity.

On Tuesday, the government published a report by property specialists Carter Jonas which found that the compensation package offered may not allow some Shimmer homeowners to acquire a similar property in the local area.

House prices on the estate have already dropped by an average of 10% of their original purchase prices, according to Carter Jonas. Consultants found that a shortage of similar new-build properties in the surrounding area could lead to price inflation as ousted Shimmer residents bid against each other.

“The value of properties on the Shimmer estate, together with a low supply of affordable housing in Mexborough and its surrounding areas, could therefore make it difficult for homeowners to buy a local equivalent property with statutory compensation they would receive from the government,” the report concluded.

According to Carter Jonas, 130 houses have been sold on the estate, with a further 90 properties either built and unsold or yet to be built. All homeowners can now apply for the government to buy their properties at the “HS2 unblighted” market rate, plus 10% compensation and moving costs.

Peter Douglas, 63, and his wife Sue, 66, bought their house on the Shimmer estate for £165,000 in 2014 and spent two years doing it up for their retirement. Their home is only five metres from the proposed viaduct, so is not included in the 16 definitely facing the bulldozers, but they have applied for the government to buy their home. “Who in their right mind would want to buy or rent a house next to a railway line running 200mph trains?” said Peter.

They are preparing for “hard negotiations” to secure a fair price, fearing that because the estate has never been finished (because of uncertainty over HS2), they will be undervalued.

Andrew Weaver, chief executive of Strata, which built Shimmer, said: “Our thoughts are with the homeowners, who like us, have had to live through over 12 months of uncertainty for a decision to be made. The residents remain our priority and we now need to understand what this decision means for the development and the Strata business as a whole.”

Grayling said on Tuesday: “Britain’s new railway line will bring huge economic benefits across the country and help ensure this government delivers on its promise to spread wealth beyond London and the south-east.

“We will now press ahead with building the line, while continuing to ensure affected communities get appropriate support and are treated with fairness, compassion and respect.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/18/people-on-estate-facing-demolition-for-hs2-could-struggle-to-find-new-homes

HSBC cash sweetener aims to entice staff to new Birmingham HQ

By Rupert Neate
Canary Wharf staff offered up to £2,500 for each employee persuaded to relocate from London as CEO admits to ‘tricky’ task

HSBC’s new UK headquarters under construction in Birmingham, March 2017. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

HSBC is offering its employees cash bonuses of up to £2,500 if they can convince a colleague to move from London to the bank’s new British headquarters in Birmingham.

The bank has created a special bonus scheme to encourage staff to “help us find the right people for Birmingham” because it is struggling to entice enough of its staff to make the 120-mile move before its new office opens in January.

Staff who manage to convince a friend to make the move to Birmingham will be rewarded with a cash bonus of between £750 and £2,500 depending on the seniority of the new Midlands recruit.


Britain’s biggest bank has only convinced just over half of its target of 1,040 people to make the move more than two years after announcing it would switch its UK banking operations from Canary Wharf to Birmingham.

The new cash bonus comes on top of the bank already attempting to sweeten the change by making its standard relocation package “more attractive” with “support for housing and children’s schooling”.

António Simões, HSBC’s chief executive, told reporters last week, during a visit to the bank’s new 10-storey 210,000-sq-ft office building in Centenary Square: “We have had some challenges but today we are ahead of where we thought we would be, with around 53% of the roles filled.”

Simões, who took over as HSBC’s chief executive in 2015, said it had proven “trickier” than expected to convince some specialists, particularly in areas like marketing and communications, to make the move, which he described as “quite a big task still”.

“We’ve made the standard package more attractive by offering for example support for housing and children’s schooling,” Simões said. He did not mention the cash bonuses, which were later found to be offered on HSBC internal staff website.

A HSBC spokesman said that despite the difficulties in convincing staff to move, the bank was convinced that its new £200m office would open on schedule.

The reluctance of the bank’s staff to move to the Midlands comes despite much lower house prices and a cheaper cost of living in Birmingham compared with London.

According to the property prices index provided by Hometrack the average home in Birmingham costs £152,000, less than a third of the average price in London. But house prices in Birmingham are rising much faster than in the capital, with prices up 7.7% in the year to April compared to 3.5% in London.

The new Birmingham office will contain HSBC’s UK retail and commercial bank, which is being split from the riskier parts of the group under the government’s ringfencing rules, which come into force at the start of 2019.

The continuing difficulty in recruiting staff for the Birmingham office may concern the bank’s official monitor, who was last year reported to have described the move as “a programme in crisis”. Michael Cherkasky, a lawyer who was installed as the bank’s official monitor following HSBC’s £1.2bn fine for money laundering offences from the US in 2012, was said to have expressed concerns to executives about the lack of staff willing to make the move. He said a delay could lead to the bank’s UK division lacking the ability to maintain proper money-laundering controls.

HSBC, which has 16 million customers in the UK, selected Birmingham for its British headquarters partly because of its purchase of Midland Bank in 1992. About 48,000 of HSBC’s 257,000 staff work in Britain.

Many British banks and other businesses are trying to relocate parts of their operations out of London because of the rising cost of office space in the capital. Of the 2.2 million people employed in financial services jobs in the UK, two-thirds now work outside London, according to data from the industry lobby group TheCityUK.

Financial jobs in Birmingham rose by 6.9% between 2013 and 2015, the group said. Other large financial employers in the city include Deutsche Bank, which has increased its Birmingham staff from 35 in 2007 to about 1,500 today.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/04/hsbc-cash-sweetener-aims-to-entice-staff-to-new-birmingham-hq

The Landlord Law Conference takes place tomorrow

By Marc Da Silva

Despite recent tax changes, buy-to-let property remains an attractive investment at a time of low interest rates and volatile stock markets, but some investors fail to recognise that becoming a landlord comes with added responsibilities, which are constantly changing.

Failure to comply with the rules can result in prosecutions, fines and the inability to evict non paying tenants, and that is where the Landlord Law Conference could potentially help you.

The conference, which will take place at the Sprowston Manor Hotel on the outskirts of Norwich tomorrow, will feature a number of legal talks from specialist lawyers and trainers, as well as an exhibitors area, with specialist companies there to talk to and advise you, including Anthony Gold solicitors, the Property Redress Scheme, Aston Shaw Accountants and the Residential Landlords Association, among others.

The day should prove to be a good opportunity to network with other buy-to-let landlords and property professionals.


To attend the event, you will have to buy a ticket, at a cost of £204. To do so, click here.

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2017/5/the-landlord-law-conference-takes-place-tomorrow

HSBC launches Britain's first fixed-rate mortgage below 1%

Customers lock in for two years at 0.99% interest, but they need a deposit of 35%, in deal described as new benchmark

HSBC has launched Britain’s first fixed-rate mortgage with an interest rate below 1%, as competition among lenders hots up and the cost of borrowing for banks and building societies falls to new lows.

The bank is offering customers the chance to lock in for two years at an interest rate of 0.99%, but they need a deposit of at least 35% and will pay a product fee of £1,499. 

David Hollingworth, of mortgage brokers London and Country, described the rate as “absolutely ridiculously low … It sets a new benchmark for two-year fixed rates.” He said the fee was “big, but not the biggest” and that repayments on a £150,000 mortgage would be £565 a month.

The deal is the cheapest fixed rate on the market, and the lowest ever recorded by the financial information firm Moneyfacts. It matches HSBC’s previous lowest rate, a 0.99% discount deal it offered in 2014, but undercuts Yorkshire building society’s current market-leading fixed rate of 1.14%. That loan has a slightly lower fee of £1,345.

Rachel Springall, finance expert at Moneyfacts, said: “As with any deal, applicants should always work out the true cost of the mortgage to decide whether it’s right for them.”

Hollingworth said the rate on the deal was one percentage point below the cheapest five-year fixed-rate, a 1.99% mortgage also offered by HSBC. “You have to weigh that up against the longer-term security of the five-year deal. Two years comes around pretty quickly, but for some people that suits them just fine,” he said.

Funds for the loan would be limited, so it was unlikely to be around for a long time, he added.

The launch comes as Moneyfacts data shows that rates on two-year fixed-rate mortgages have risen since May, from an average of 2.56% to 2.58%. However, five- and 10-year deals have fallen to all-time lows of 3.16% and 3.46% respectively.

Although the Bank of England base rate has remained unchanged since March 2009, mortgage rates have fallen in recent years as the cost of funding the loans has dropped. The recent dip in long-term fixed-rate deals has been driven by investors seeking a haven for their cash in the run-up to the EU referendum on Thursday. Concerns about a Brexit vote have driven money into government bonds, driving yields on them down to record lows.

The maximum available to borrowers who take out HSBC’s new mortgage is £500,000.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/jun/21/hsbc-fixed-rate-mortgage-below-1-per-cent-interest-rate