Swedish investors have given a £300m vote of confidence to the UK’s post-Brexit property market by approving a third round of funding for developer CEG.

David Hodgson, Regional Head of Strategic Development, told our Leeds event that CEG is pressing ahead with its plans on the city’s South Bank area. The company’s Swedish investors had just set up a third round of funding, worth £300m to invest in the UK. The company’s confidence reflected the undersupply of new space in the city, which is where CEG is developing its biggest scheme.

Hodgson said the building should be fully let by the end of the year with a deal in the pipeline due to be concluded with a ‘big global brand’ and CEG is also looking to start on site early in the new year on 135 houses at Kirkstall Forge which the masterplan has earmarked for 1050 homes.

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Outline consent has been secured for 1.35m sq ft of offices at CEG’s Tower Works development, including detailed permission for the first two blocks, on Leeds South Bank.

They’re looking to target the first building, containing 38,000 sq ft with 6,000 sq ft floor-plates, at high tech and digital businesses, with the second building set to include 173,000 sq ft with floorplates of up to 17,000 sq ft.

Andrew Cobden, Managing Director at Vastint UK, said there is an appetite for new office space in the city, where the company is redeveloping the former Tetley Brewery site on Leeds South Bank: “There’s not been a huge amount of delivery in the city centre in the last few years, but I feel appetite for new product coming through.”

The brewery redevelopment includes 1m sq ft of offices, 850 homes as well as a ‘substantial’ range of bars and restaurants. Vastint are looking to attract independent occupiers which will be ‘destinations in their own right rather than big brand chains’ for these leisure units.

A 350-ha park, which will be the centrepiece of the brewery site regeneration, will be delivered in phases as the scheme itself is built out. It will aim to open up linkages with the city centre across the river and into neighbouring communities to the south of the site.

The first building in the scheme is an office block, ranging from between 5-8 storeys containing 200,000sq ft of space spread across individual floorplates of up to 22,000 sq ft.

Adam Brannen, Head of Regeneration at Leeds City Council, said the authority has been working with developers on a bid for £100m from the Housing Infrastructure Fund.

The council is aiming to increasing housing delivery in the city centre from the low hundreds seen in recent years to 3,300 per annum – half of which should be affordable. However, responding to a question from the audience about the potential role that modern methods of construction could play in speeding up housing delivery, he said it has ‘a lot of work to do to provide itself as a viable model’.
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