News

Labour has almost halved its green investment plan for the next parliament. The opposition party, which has a large lead in opinion polls with a general election due to be held within the next 11 months, previously made a flagship commitment to a £28bn annual “green prosperity plan”. The plan…

A council is retendering a £57m ultra-low-carbon school job won by Willmott Dixon last year. West Sussex County Council has opened bidding for a single-stage design-and-build contract for the Bedelands Academy (pictured), a new 900-pupil secondary school for those living in a new Homes England-led development called Burgess Hill Brookleigh.…

A National Housing Federation-backed alliance of housing associations and councils is looking for dozens of traditional-build main contractors to join a new modern methods of construction (MMC) framework. Building Better, which was set up to increase the use of MMC in social housing, is looking for SME builders to lead…

Profit and revenue have both dropped at Higgins Group amid a big increase in remediation costs and a redundancy programme. Newly released accounts for the Essex-headquartered contractor, covering the year to 31 July 2023, show that revenue fell to £171.9m from £215.9m in the previous year, which it blamed partly…

Housing secretary Michael Gove has said he doesn’t believe a modern methods of construction (MMC) taskforce is necessary, after criticism that a promised £10m taskforce had never materialised. At a House of Lords’ Built Environment Committee session on 6 February, Gove said that “other issues have loomed larger” since the…

HS2 offers “very poor value for money” after the cancellation of its northern leg, according to the Public Accounts Committee. In a report published on 6 February, the committee said that non-departmental public body HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport (DfT) do not know the costs of the scheme…

Administrators have officially been appointed for logistics and warehouse specialist Readie Construction Ltd. A notice on the company website states that it is in administration and has ceased trading with immediate effect, after Constantinos Pedhiou and Gary Shankland of Begbies Traynor were called in yesterday to begin winding down the…

Housebuilder Barratt has agreed a deal to buy rival Redrow, allowing the combined business to make £90m in cost savings, it announced this morning. An announcement to the London Stock Exchange said that the £2.5bn deal, which would make the new firm the biggest housebuilder in the UK, would drive…

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.…