Author Archives: Charlotte Banks

The Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) has warned that building inspectors are being pressured to certify beyond their level of competence. In a notice to its members issued earlier this month, the professional body raised the alarm ahead of 6 April, when all building inspectors will have to be…

Balfour Beatty has announced that Anne Drinkwater will take on the position of senior independent non-executive director in May. She replaces Stephen Billingham, who will step down from the board after the next annual general meeting. Drinkwater has served as a non-executive director for Balfour since December 2018. She will…

The government has reallocated £4.7bn from the axed HS2 Northern leg towards local transport in the North and Midlands. The Local Transport Fund, part of the government’s Network North programme, will distribute £2.5bn to local authorities in the North of England and £2.2bn to councils in the Midlands over seven…

Stewart Milne’s supply-chain creditors are set to lose almost all of the £153.8m they are owed, according to administrators. So far, 1,375 unsecured creditors have come forward, although administrators from Teneo expect the number to increase. Any payout is expected to be less than a penny in the pound. The…

Galliford Try has announced three civils contract wins worth a total £98m. The contractor’s environment business has won two contracts for Thames Water under its AMP7 framework, worth £64m in total. Galliford Try Environment will build a £33m pipeline in Thames Water’s Riverside Flow Monitoring Zone in south London in…

Morgan Sindall has announced record profit and revenue in its unaudited accounts for the year ending 31 December 2023. The contractor posted a pre-tax profit of £143.9m, up from £85.3m in 2022. The increase represents a steady growth in operating profit after the firm’s 2022 pre-tax profit was hit by…

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has called for an urgent review into how many surveyors will be registered building inspectors by April – amid growing fears that new building-control regulations will strangle capacity in the sector. The head of Local Authority Building Control last week called for a…

A roofer and council worker have been jailed for defrauding New Forest District Council out of more than £88,000, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said. Mark Diaper, who worked at a now-defunct roofing company in Southampton, was found to have bribed council maintenance operative Richard Cullen to secure work…

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has taken over the criminal investigation into the death of a worker on Laing O’Rourke’s Everton Stadium project. Michael Jones, 26, died from head injuries on 14 August last year at Bramley-Moore Dock. Jones died after being crushed between a scissor ladder and a beam,…

A company has been fined £450,000 and its director handed a suspended sentence after a worker died at a construction site in Birmingham, according to the Crown Prosecution Service. Oleksander Rudyy, 49, was crushed to death in May 2019 when the structure he was standing on collapsed. He had earlier…