Love is in the air in Watford

Rightmove has ranked the top areas for those looking for love, taking into account the number of people who are single, the number using internet dating and the proportion which heads out to socialise. Watford tops the tables, closely followed by Edinburgh. Slough, Sunderland and Cambridge follow in the rankings, with London sitting at ninth.

Construction job boom to continue

A new report published by the Construction Industry Training Board has estimated that 200,000 new jobs will be created within the construction sector by 2019. This means 40,000 workers will be needed to fill new vacancies each year, 8,000 more than previously expected. The report also predicts that private housing will increase by 4.6% over the next few years. Annual average construction output will rise by an average of 2.9% across the UK. A separate survey has found that the number of graduates has reached a record high, with new graduate posts within the construction industry rising by 22.1%, the third most significant growth behind the tech industry and the Teach First programme.

Bad air in over 15m British homes

A Europe-wide study by the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland has estimated that 15.3m homes in Britain are so badly ventilated that families are at risk of “toxic home syndrome”, which encompasses a number of allergies and illnesses caused by bad air. These conditions contribute to around 128,666 deaths in the UK each year.

“Manorial rights”

The Times reports that about 90,000 “manorial rights” claims, including rights to hunt and shoot but also mine or frack in other people's property, have been lodged with the Land Registry. Thousands of home owners could see their property values plummet as a result of the "anachronistic" legal powers, which date back to feudal times. They allow “lords of the manor” to claim rights over property even if the owner possesses the freehold. Some 84,000 manorial rights notices were registered between December 2012 and July 2014, yet only 3,200 notices had been registered in the previous decade.

Death of a salesman

Experts have predicted that estate agents, car salesmen and traffic wardens will be replaced by robots in 50 years’ time. The research has been published to coincide with the launch of a new TV series – Extant – which illustrates one scientist’s prediction that many jobs could be replaced by humans. Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock said that for many people robots would become the preferred option for interaction with services like health, leisure and relaxation as well as admin and bureaucracy.

Skills shortage reaches pinnacle

RICS has revealed that the UK’s construction skills shortage hit critical mass in the final three months of 2014, with 48% of the group’s members reporting a lack of staff across all main trades. "Labour shortages have become increasingly onerous in every area of the sector,” commented Alan Muse, director of the built environment at RICS. The Times, Page: 41

Supermarkets sitting on 1,000 acres of land

New figures from CBRE have revealed that supermarkets are building on just 6% of the land they control across the UK, underlining the problem they face with undeveloped sites. CBRE said the pipeline of new grocery stores in the UK is 46.61m sq ft, the equivalent of more than 1,000 acres. However, just 2.8m sq ft of these new stores are under construction. The land is either subject to a proposal for a new food store, or planning permission has already been granted. The Telegraph, picking up on the figures, says the news will lead to critics claiming that supermarkets are hoarding land that could be used for new homes. The paper also points out, however, that the statistics highlight the scale of the challenge grocery retailers’ face in dealing with their land. If the retailers decide they no longer want to build shops on the sites, they will be forced to book billions of pounds in write-downs. Chris Keen, director of supermarket leasing at CBRE, said “It is too early to say whether we are looking at a hiatus or the onset of an actual long-run decline in UK grocery store development activity. A sea-change in grocery markets is however certainly occurring.”