London Estate

Adam Wiles PROPERTY DIRECTOR

The London estate is centred on Cecil Court and manages properties around Leicester Square, Charing Cross Road and St Martins Lane.

Outside the historic core Estate, there are other individual buildings located elsewhere in the borough of Westminster. The management of the properties was taken back in-house’ in 2003 after being managed by external agents for the preceding 50 years. Since 2003 we have been on a continuous programme of reinvestment and improvement. Last year was one of the busiest on record and until Covid struck footfall and business in the West End was at record-breaking levels.

In 2019, we began one of the estate’s largest ever building projects at Brock House, which is an outlying property on Great Portland Street W1. This is a major refurbishment and roof extension of a six-floor office building that is a relatively rare “island site”. Gascoyne’s work has been completed, and the tenant is now fitting out the 30,000 sq. ft. net (40,000 sq. ft. gross) space. This is one of only two major projects across the Group that was not put on hold in March and construction continued throughout the Covid lockdown. All work should be completed and the tenant in occupation by February 2021.

Since the onset of Covid our corner of London has felt like a war-zone and although we saw a small recovery in the Summer, it looks as though we are in for a long and difficult winter. A significant percentage of our commercial tenants depend on the tourist and hospitality sector and when lockdown was first imposed footfall fell by over 90%. This had a disastrous impact on our tenants. Since the initial lockdown trading has improved, but is still at an historically low level. Thankfully, over the years we have

The new look Cecil Court

got to know our tenants well and the trust that we have established is helping us get through a challenge that is of a magnitude and duration that none of us has ever experienced.

Our priority today is to work with our tenants, to nurse them through the crisis in the firm belief that London will recover but sadly many businesses have already failed and we fear there are more to come. There will undoubtedly be future beyond Covid as everything that makes London a great City is still in place. Despite the relentlessly bad news, we are seeing some signs of our tenants looking beyond the pandemic and making plans for the future. Three significant commercial lettings should conclude in Oct/Nov, and the current vacancy rate for the Estate is still extremely low.

Most of our commercial tenants depend on the tourist and hospitality sector and since lockdown was first imposed footfall has fallen by over 90%.

CRANBORNE & RURAL

Gavin Fauvel ESTATE DIRECTOR, CRANBORNE

Welcome to the Cranborne section. It’s very exciting to see this new format Newsletter – it’s launch having been delayed by the lockdown. It has been an interesting, challenging and diverting few months for all the team here.

When the lockdown first came into place, our tenants, partners and occupiers all rallied ‘round to make sure everyone else was looked after; could get food, medicines and access to essentials. Our businesses that open to public all had to close – save for the Stores which reverted to the general stores perhaps more common in the 1970’s – staff picked goods from the shelves and packaged them for delivery or collection.

Our property team continues to work hard with occupiers, making sure that any real hardship issues are dealt with and signposting all the available help. Whilst internally, all staff have battened-down and implemented cautious budgets that seek to preserve group cash reserves. However, we have used the opportunity to press ahead with some longer-term projects.

The most significant project has been the digitisation of all estate files and records, including leases and tenancy agreements. This proved essential when enforced home-working came into play meaning all staff could seamlessly access records and agreements in the “virtual office”. Liz Boreham is to be congratulated for getting this completed – thank you.

Beaters at work in the late summer heat, flushing for English partridge in a flower-rich cover at Cranborne Farm.

In better news, the dire drought in New South Wales, affecting our farming partnership in Australia, has broken. Three years of severe drought brought our business and that of many others, very close to the limit of being able to continue trading, but we managed to hang-in. Having done so, with the support of our bank, we are delighted that we held on to our breeding females and don’t have to re-stock from a very scarce market.

We took on Ollie Hauxwell as Rural Estate Manager, covering both Hatfield and Cranborne and he had a tricky start on day one of the lockdown having then also to go into isolation for two weeks! He has made a fantastic contribution thus far and we are making some important long-term decisions on farming and land management a result of Ollie’s hard work.

We have Zoomed, Teams’d and spoken to each other probably more than in normal times and there has been a real sense of camaraderie and togetherness – from the family and directors through to all staff; our tenants; partners and locals. It’s been a real pleasure to be working alongside such great teams.

The greatest outcome so far of the disruption from the pandemic has been the strength and tenacity of our people across the Estates.

Looking directly due south over Cranborne from the boundary with Blagdon on a hot September day after harvest

CRANBORNE PROPERTY

Clare Amey PROPERTY MANAGER

This is my first article for the Newsletter and I can’t quite believe I have been working at Cranborne for over a year now.

I would like to say a big thank you to colleagues for helping me get settled into the role as Property Manager. Over the last 18 months or so we’ve had 23 properties returned to us, in many cases these have been occupied by long standing residents and have been in need of partial or major works to bring them up to the modern day letting standard. Where we’ve been able to undertake such works this has allowed us to re-let 13 of these properties. Over 70 routine inspections have been carried out since July 2019 which provides a great opportunity to meet with residents in their homes and identify future repair issues. We had to delay inspections for a few months due to lockdown but have since restarted them. The ‘Tenants Survey 2020’ was carried out earlier in the year across all estates. It was well supported in Cranborne and the results provide useful information to assist with future planning of services within the property team. Other legislation updates we’ve prepared for include EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) changes which came into force in April 2020. The purpose of an EPC is to look at how we can reduce energy usage and increase efficiency in the homes we provide. This is not a one off exercise but something we need to be mindful of when carrying out major repairs or refurbishments which can be more challenging to implement with older properties. There have also been changes in Electrical Safety from June 2020 and we are currently rolling out a programme of electrical inspections across the estate where required. Overall, the demand for rural properties continues to increase, we currently have over 100 applicants looking with various budgets and the main requirement is still for family sized accommodation.