News

Housing secretary Michael Gove has approved a controversial mixed-use tower in central London, set to be delivered by Lendlease. The 72 Upper Ground building, nicknamed ‘the Slab’, will stand 100 metres tall on a 2.5 acre site on the South Bank. Lendlease will replace the existing 24-storey London Studios, where…

United Living beat the January blues by topping the monthly league table for the first time, winning £184.3m of work. Two contract wins took the housing specialist to first place. The largest was a £160m contract to refurbish Huguenot House, a 1960s-built housing block near Leicester Square in central London.…

Big hitters in the construction industry are working on a major new collaboration aimed at promoting the UK construction industry to secondary school children. Specialist firm the School Outreach Company is working with senior sector figures on plans to raise £100,000 with the aim of creating a network of five…

The leader of a Commons inquiry has called on the housing minister to respond to an independent review into the testing of construction products. Labour MP Clive Betts, chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities select committee’s fire-safety inquiry, has written to housing minister Lee Rowley asking the government…

Confidence among UK construction firms improved in January with the latest monthly S&P Global/CIPS UK Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) showing that business optimism has reached its highest level for two years. The headline construction PMI rating ticked up to 48.8 in January compared to 46.8 in December 2023, with survey…

McLaren Construction ended its 2022/23 financial year with revenue of £964m, a 22 per cent increase on its 2021/22 total of £751.7m – and it expects further growth in the year to come. The latest annual financial results exceeded expectations, as McLaren had forecast full-year turnover of £878.5m in the…

The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) has called on the government to progress higher accessibility standards in new-build homes. In its written evidence for a Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) select committee inquiry into housing for people with disabilities, the body said the government “must prioritise” a…

Administrations continue to rise as insolvencies soar and more construction firms teeter on the brink The construction sector started 2024 with yet another year-on-year increase in business administrations. Data from Creditsafe showed that 26 firms collapsed in January compared with 15 in the first month of 2023. Just four companies…

The three months to the end of January saw the value of construction project starts plummet by 36 per cent compared with the previous 12 months, Glenigan has revealed. In its latest Construction Index update, the industry intelligence data provider added that the residential sector suffered a 34 per cent…

Homes England may be in line to recover £4.3m from the collapsed Ilke Homes administrators have now said, leaving it with a loss of £64.5m. Private equity-backed offsite specialist Ilke went into administration in June, with a loss of more than 1,000 jobs. An initial report from administrators at AlixPartners…