Government

The government’s ongoing hunt for collapse-prone concrete in its buildings has uncovered further issues, with more than 20 NHS bodies now reporting cases. Last month, Construction News reported that the Office of Government Property (OGP) had been charged with hunting down dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in state-owned buildings.…

The government has injected a further £170m to speed up the construction of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant. The funding will be used to prepare the site on the Suffolk coast for future construction, procure key components from the project’s supply chain and expand its workforce. At the peak…

The programme to restore the Palace of Westminster underspent its budget in the first quarter of the financial year, despite the urgent need to make the historic parliamentary buildings safe. A report from the Houses of Parliament’s Restoration and Renewal board on its activities from April to June shows that…

Housing secretary Michael Gove has doubled down on the government’s commitment to require second staircases in high-rise residential schemes – lowering the proposed threshold from 30 metres to 18 metres. In recent months, a number of contractors have halted work on developments over worries arising from a government consultation to…

Levelling-up secretary Michael Gove has rejected Marks & Spencer’s plans to replace its historic Oxford Street store in London with a new mixed-use office and retail building – despite a planning inspector saying the scheme should be approved. Gove said the public benefits of a new 10-storey building “would not…

The chief executive of Taylor Wimpey, Jennie Daly, is one of 14 business leaders appointed to prime minister Rishi Sunak’s new Business Council. The role of the council is “to support the delivery of the prime minister’s priority to grow the economy and make the UK the best place to…

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has appointed two bodies to assess building-control surveyors. The Building Safety Competence Foundation (BSCF) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) are the first organisations to become independent competence assessors for building-control surveyors in England. The competence assessment is part of the ‘pathway’ for…

Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds has accused the government of being “more interested in small boats than homes for people”. Reynolds, who is co-chair of the government-sponsored Construction Leadership Council alongside business minister Nusrat Ghani, said “the government has lost its love for construction”. In an interview with Construction News…

The government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP) has only identified four main contractors that would take on projects worth £600m or more, a report has revealed. A National Audit Office (NAO) investigation into plans to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030 says the scheme has not been good value for money…

The government's housing department has returned £245m in unspent funds, originally allocated for remediating unsafe buildings, to the Treasury after forcing cash from building firms. A Freedom of Information request by local government researcher Jack Shaw showed that the cash is among £1.9bn in unspent capital money returned by the…