British Land doubles its development arm

Even though attitudes towards new development remained sensibly cautious, demand has been brisk, so the pipeline of committed developments more than doubled to 1.6m square feet, although speculative exposure remained low at just 4.5 per cent of the portfolio.

And underpinning the strength of demand, around 55 per cent of this has already been pre-let or is under offer. Committed construction costs of £427m are largely covered by the £373m of receipts to come from the now completed Clarges Mayfair residential development.

The plan now is to focus on a campus-focused London office business, larger multi-let retail outlets and residential build to rent. The campus model, based on providing flexible office space, has continued to expand, rising to 21 per cent of the office space take up in the year to March 2018.

At Canada Water, where it has a 53 acre site, a master development agreement has been secured with Southwark council, and the first phase will eventually cover 1.8m square feet of mixed use space, while the overall master plan is expected to deliver 3,000 homes, 2m sq ft of workspace and 1m sq ft of retail and leisure facilities.

Analysts at Peel Hunt are forecasting adjusted net asset value at the March 2019 year-end of 940.6p from 939.8p in 2018.