Consultancy says companies quoted on London stock market issued 65 in three months to end of September

The number of profit warnings from UK-listed companies has risen to the highest level in two years, as the war in the Middle East triggers a surge in costs for businesses before the budget.

With less than a fortnight before John Healey’s tax and spending statement to the Commons, the consultants EY-Parthenon said companies quoted on the London stock market had issued 65 warnings in the three months to the end of September.

Tories plan to scrap low-carbon housebuilding, Greens back new nuclear reactors, and Labour put oil-drilling decisions on hold

New homes could be built without solar panels, heat pumps and high-grade insulation, leading to higher household bills if the Conservative party wins the next general election.

Kemi Badenoch made scrapping the future homes standard (FHS) one of the central planks of her bid to become the next prime minister at the Tory party conference this week.

Sixty top architecture firms from around the world have mooted 500 eye-catching projects across Albania, sparking fury and protests. Now they’re being celebrated in an 800-page tome that some are calling ‘a smoking gun’

Last autumn, I was sitting with a prominent architect in New York, when their phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. They finally checked the messages and chuckled. “Oh, the Albanian Architecture Army chat is blowing up again,” they said. “It looks like Edi has some new projects for us.”

Edi was Edi Rama, the prime minister of Albania since 2013, who has been presiding over the rapid transformation of the former communist country with a fleet of glamorous building projects. There are twisting towers in Tirana, along with prize-winning public spaces, striking coastal resorts, and many more dazzling visions on the way – all now brought together in a hefty new book, The Albanian Files.

Prosecutors will decide who to charge within eight months. But ministers should also re-examine the law

Police have at last asked prosecutors to consider charges relating to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. The suffering of those who survived or were bereaved by the blaze, which killed 72 people, has been exacerbated by the extraordinary length of time that the investigation has taken. But they can now look forward to a decision about who will face criminal charges. The Crown Prosecution Service has promised that this will be before the 10th anniversary next June.

The names of the 20 organisations and 54 individuals in the police files will not be released by prosecutors unless they are charged. But the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Kensington and Chelsea council have both announced that they are on the list. Angela Rayner promised on Wednesday that the government would cooperate fully whatever decision is reached regarding a potential breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Kensington and Chelsea council revealed that a charge of corporate manslaughter against it is being considered alongside health and safety and fire regulation breaches.

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OS index examines which ‘urban heat islands’ suffer the most – and which cope the best with rising temperatures

Portsmouth, Leicester, Exeter, Bristol and Nottingham will be among the cities that warm the most by the end of this century as global heating turns British cities into urban heat islands, according to research.

Analysis from Ordnance Survey (OS) has created a heat vulnerability index for all cities in Great Britain. Portsmouth, which sits on the south coast of England and is home to 208,000 people, is the most vulnerable to extreme heat today and into the future, according to the research from the OS, the Met Office and the data analysis company 4 Earth Intelligence.

Our buildings are monuments to extraction and extreme emissions. But what if we turned from destructive concrete to timber?

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

I travelled to Oslo in the early autumn. It felt like arriving into the future. Or, at least, a fragment of a possible future. I drove north in the quiet digital bubble of my electric rental car. In 2024, Norway became the first country in the world where electric cars outnumbered petrol cars.

A smooth, pristine motorway unfolded between farmlands and low hillsides of dense green forest. Long tunnels carried the route up above the banks of Lake Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. After a little more than an hour, the road curved downward to run parallel to the lakeshore.

Spectrum Building leaseholders awaiting payouts after freeholder, Arinium, went bankrupt shortly after 2024 blaze

Sarah Williams vividly remembers the night in 2016 when she camped overnight in a car park to put down a deposit on a flat in the newly completed Spectrum Building in Dagenham, east London.

“People started queuing for those flats 24 hours before they went on sale,” she said. “It was basically the only flat I could afford in London. This was a year before Grenfell, and the flats market in London was completely crazy.”

Victims received less compensation than shareholders in the company behind its flammable cladding. Parliament must make corporations pay for harm caused

There is something profoundly wrong when the company behind Grenfell Tower’s flammable cladding paid more compensation to its shareholders than to victims of the disaster. Of Arconic’s £86m in Grenfell-related settlements, all but £1.5m was covered by insurers. Hardly enough to make a multinational think again. The company whose product the inquiry found was the “primary cause” of the fire’s rapid spread has ended up paying only a fraction of the wider social cost, while the multibillion-pound bill for making hundreds of buildings safe falls largely on the state. In June 2017, 72 people – including 18 children – died in London’s Grenfell Tower fire. Almost a decade later, nobody has been criminally charged over its causes. It’s hard to conclude anything but that Britain’s system of corporate accountability is rotten.

A new report by the thinktank Common Wealth and the financial investigations group FIND suggests putting right this state of affairs in England and Wales by adopting two changes that parliament could enact quickly. The first is a “failure to prevent” law that would make companies responsible for having adequate systems to prevent foreseeable serious harm. The second is to adopt a “punitive damages” approach. Rather than compensating victims for their loss, punitive damages ask what a company should pay for its conduct. Such an award against Arconic could have been used to meet the costs of remediation, the report says, “at no public cost”.

Exclusive: Party says housing stock ‘woefully unprepared’ for extreme heat and new rules for builders must be set

All new UK homes should be built with air conditioning to cope with the effects of the climate crisis, according to the Liberal Democrats.

The party says British homes are dangerously unsuited to rising temperatures, meaning passive cooling measures such as planting more trees in residential areas are necessary.

Experts say there will still be opportunities ahead in everything from teaching to hotels and the law

Entering the world of work often brings some uncertainty, but now there is another question: how can I AI-proof my career?

We asked people from across various industries what they think the impact of AI will be on careers, and which jobs may be less affected. While it is still early days for the tech, many had ideas about how you can best prepare yourself for a successful career in this new world.

Low-emissivity windows also keep houses warm in winter, but use on bowed glass can have magnifying-glass effect

Low-emissivity or low-E window glass is a useful green technology for keeping buildings warm in winter and cool in summer … but a rare side-effect can set the neighbours’ property on fire.

The glass is coated with a thin layer of metal or metal oxide which lets visible light through but acts like a mirror in the infrared. Heat from the interior is reflected back in, retaining warmth in winter, while unwanted solar radiation is repelled in summer.

Plans for a mega-resort, backed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, have spurred broader questions about who politics is serving

For more than a month, thousands have taken to the streets of Tirana to protest against their government, in the biggest outbreak of unrest in Albania since the collapse of communism more than three decades ago. What began with environmental concerns about protecting a nature reserve and the more than 2,500 species it hosts has become the flamingo revolution, questioning the very direction of the country.

Albanians are angered that multibillion dollar luxury developments backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump threaten one of the last wild areas on the Adriatic – Zvërnec, its lagoon and the nearby island of Sazan – and are furious at the lack of transparency surrounding the projects. The government says that deals are not finalised. But videos of bulldozers on beaches triggered the mass protests.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Campaigners say builders’ demolition of nest site highlights weak protection of wildlife from development

A building that was a noted nesting site for swifts, among the UK’s most at-risk birds, has been demolished during the nesting season, highlighting significant weaknesses in the protection of wildlife from development, campaigners say.

Contractors for the housebuilder Hill Group carried out the demolition of Regent House near Dorking station in Surrey over the last few weeks, during the nesting season which runs from 1 March to 31 August.

Chancellor hails deal saying it will create tens of thousands of jobs in the construction, hospitality, creative and technology sectors

British taxpayers will provide £1.3bn in funding to help the Hollywood studio giant Universal build its first theme park in Europe.

Comcast, the US media company that owns NBC Universal and Sky, had been considering a number of countries in which to build its first European theme park.

A recent study by Aviva found that one in nine new homes in England are being built on land at risk of flooding – often entirely within planning rules. Josh Toussaint-Strauss investigates how the system allows developers to profit while homeowners bear the cost

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A Canadian social enterprise hopes to help solve the urgent need for retrofits and shortage of skilled workers

John Mava was looking for work when a construction project started behind his house. When he visited the site and saw how different construction was in Canada compared with his native Nigeria, his interest was piqued.

“I said it would be great for me to have knowledge about this,” said Mava, who learned that in Canada, construction uses timber rather than bricks and has a focus on the environment.

Soaring cost of building materials, lack of affordability and planning bottlenecks are some of the obstacles thwarting housing target

At South and City College in Birmingham, dozens of young people clad in hi-vis vests and hard hats are building mini-walls and plastering half-formed rooms.

Some weave in and out of stacks of bricks with wheelbarrows, while others use spirit levels to check the walls are straight and flat. In a few days time, these walls will be demolished and the plastering scraped away, for a new class to come in and try their hands.

More than 80% of the UK’s tradespeople have had tools stolen. Some have lost months of work as a result. With thefts up 16% in a year, can the police and the government do anything to protect them?

If you’re on social media and have even a passing interest in home improvement, there’s a good chance you will have seen Kevin Tingley’s work. The 39-year-old decorator is known as Paint Warrior – and has millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram. He’s in demand, highly skilled, generous in sharing tips from his many years of experience and even has his own range of products on sale in the UK and the US.

But even with his social media army and branded brushes, he’s still not immune to the biggest threat faced by British tradespeople: tool theft. “It was Boxing Day morning,” Tingley says. “I was still in bed, my wife was on her way to the gym. She came running back in and told me that all the doors of my van were open.”

With major developments collapsing, pressure is growing on councils to concede on affordable housing and public amenities

Donald Trump has done his best to crush the green shoots of the global, post-pandemic economic recovery – nowhere more so than in the UK.

The US president’s vandalism can be seen across the economic landscape, especially in the property sector, which has become more sensitive to international events since the spread of Covid-19 disrupted long-established supply chains and sent the cost of raw materials soaring.

With construction overwhelmingly male, Refuge says tradeswomen help survivors of abuse feel safer

One of the main challenges in maintaining the 64 homes for domestic abuse survivors run by Refuge is the reliance on a male-dominated workforce of electricians, plumbers and decorators.

“The presence of men can be distressing and could trigger past traumas for our survivors,” said Lisa Cantwell-Hope, the head of property services at the charity. “Male contractors need an escort to make our survivors feel more comfortable, and we always put a notice out to all our residents saying there will be a male presence in the building today. So it can be challenging and takes up more time.”