Legal

The High Court has overturned housing secretary Michael Gove’s decision to block Marks & Spencer’s controversial Oxford Street redevelopment. Justice Lieven upheld M&S’s appeal against the decision on Friday morning (1 March) in a blow to campaigners, who objected to the carbon impact of demolishing and rebuilding the retail giant’s…

Builders merchants, scaffolders and a subsidiary of a large main contractor are among firms named by the government for failing to pay the minimum wage. More than 500 companies have been named after investigations by HMRC found that between 2015 and 2023 they had breached the National Minimum Wage Act.…

A payroll firm involved in a long-running dispute with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) over £8m of levy payments has lost large parts of its latest legal battle. In 2018, the CITB assessed that Hudson Contract Services (now known as Knot Builders) owed £27.4m (later revised to £7.96m) in…

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…

A self-employed construction contractor who fraudulently obtained a £20,000 Covid bounceback loan has been ordered to pay back half the amount. Adam Lennard, 58, was given an eight-month jail sentence, suspended for 15 months, and ordered to pay back £10,000 to the public purse, according to a statement by the…

The High Court has refused an application by a director to remain in post after admitting his role in an illegal demolition cartel. Nicholas Brown, former managing director of Brown and Mason Group, agreed an undertaking in May last year with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to not serve…

Lendlease is being pursued by a PFI company it formerly co-owned over alleged defects on five Lancashire schools. The schools – built from 2007 by Lendlease, then called Bovis Lend Lease, under the Building Schools for the Future programme – are the subject of two legal cases being pursued by…

A Scottish court has upheld an adjudication that found an Amey joint venture should have been paid £1.8m over a delayed electrical substation project. Amey Power Services and UK Grid Solutions built a new electrical substation building and associated infrastructure in Fort Augustus, near Loch Ness in the Highlands, under…

The director of a scaffolding company has received a suspended prison sentence after one of his employees was electrocuted. Ian Pepper, director of Kent-based Canterbury City Scaffolding, has been sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, suspended for 12 months, and ordered to undertake 200 hours of unpaid work and 20…

HS2 is preparing to apply for an extension to the injunction banning “disruptive protests” on its route, including on the cancelled phase 2a, Construction News can reveal. The legal measure, first granted in 2022, bans anyone from entering or remaining on HS2-owned land; obstructing or otherwise interfering with vehicle access;…