Renters fleeing inner London in 'race for space', data suggests

Places such as Chessington becoming more popular with rise of home working

Renters are swapping inner London transport hubs for homes further afield as the need to commute has become less important than a desire for space, data on searches on property website Rightmove suggests.

Analysis of 60m searches in August showed steep falls in the number of searches for rental homes in commuter hubs such as Earl’s Court in west London, and New Cross in the south, while areas in outer London and beyond registered big increases.

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Getting to know… Windsor

Read our guide.

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A plumber charged hundreds without a quote or invoice

All that was needed was a ballcock replaced and it won’t even explain how it cost that much

On my first post-lockdown visit to my 78-year-old mother who lives alone in Salisbury, I found her visibly upset. It soon emerged that she had asked a plumbing company called Rightio to replace a ballcock in her toilet and it later charged her £329. It also appeared to have signed her up to some kind of care plan costing £9.50 a month.

Rightio is a national firm that appears to subcontract local plumbers. She says that prior to the plumber arriving, Rightio took her debit card details, including her CVC number.

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My marriage is in crisis and I'm wondering who has more rights on the property

The mortgage is fully paid off, and, although I paid it all, it is in both our names

Q I would like to know who has more rights to the property that both my wife and I still occupy but may not for much longer as we are going through a crisis in our marriage.

Back in the 1980s I took out an endowment mortgage and paid for all the premiums for the endowment policy and all the mortgage interest payments. A number of years later, I got a joint mortgage with my wife but again paid for the whole of the mortgage.

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UK cities should work for the people who live in them, not for distant shareholders | Neil McInroy

Covid has caused terrible pain, but offers the chance to halt the financial juggernaut that sucks wealth from our urban centres

Coronavirus is changing the way we live in cities. Many people are now working from home and spending more time in their local communities. While some smaller businesses have reported they are thriving, urban centres are struggling to survive.

The benefits of this drop in commuting for carbon emissions, health and wellbeing are at odds with the financial model that has long underpinned city centre economies. It’s no surprise that the arbiters of financial capitalism have insisted that workers must return to the office. But what if instead of resisting these profound economic changes, we embraced them and built something better than the urban economy of the past?

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Everything you need to know about planning permission Nottingham Estate Agents

Planning permission can seem a daunting process – OnTheMarket’s guide explains exactly what’s involved. What is planning permission and when do I need it? If you want to construct a new building or make large-scale changes to an existing structure, including extensions and outbuildings, you will need planning permission from the local authority. The purpose […]

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Country diary: there's new life in Miss Willmott’s Ghost

Allendale, Northumberland: A spider has anchored its nest to flowers and stems, linking the sea hollies in fine threads

The summer boom may be over but there are still insects feeding from the sea hollies in my garden. There’s nectar in their steely grey tops though the lower flowerheads are browning and going to seed. White-tailed bumblebees work fast, probing the tiny clusters of five flowers, interspersed with spiny barbs, that are rhythmically arranged in tall domes. This is Eryngium giganteum, also known as Miss Willmott’s Ghost, which is named after Ellen Willmott, an early guerrilla gardener who left a trail of seeds in the gardens she visited.

I’ve seen the native wild eryngo, E maritimum, growing in the gravels of the north Norfolk coast. A shorter plant, its flowers are metallic blue and burr-shaped and, like my garden variety, protected by a silver ruff of viciously spiked bracts. Sea hollies are actually umbellifers and, like so many of the apiaceae, very attractive to insects, in this case to wasps in particular.

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