News

Morgan Sindall Construction and Skanska UK have each won jobs in Cambridge from rail pension-fund manager Railpen. Skanska has picked up a £200m contract to build the 50,000 square metre Botanic Place office scheme on Hills Road, close to the university’s botanical gardens. Designed by architect AHMM, the scheme includes…

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…

Police officers have carried out new interviews in the criminal investigation into the fatal building collapse at Didcot Power Station. Tomorrow marks the eighth anniversary of the tragedy. Four men – Michael Collings, Ken Cresswell, Christopher Huxtable and John Shaw – died after the boiler house at the disused coal-fired…

Align JV has paused planned construction work on the Colne Valley Viaduct as it carries out “urgent remedial works”. The contractor, which is formed of Bouygues Travaux Publics, Sir Robert McAlpine and VolkerFitzpatrick, announced the delay in a letter sent to local residents – as first reported by Construction News’…

Councils must ramp up the pressure on building owners who fail to fix dangerous high-rises, the housing minister has said. At a meeting on Tuesday (20 February), housing minister Lee Rowley pushed council leaders to explain how they are using £8m of funding “to force rogue building owners to 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…

The High Court has thrown out a case brought by campaigners against the £1.7bn Stonehenge Tunnel project. Mr Justice Holgate said most of the allegations brought by Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS), which was seeking a judicial review of the project's development consent order, were “unarguable”. The decision means…

Infrastructure projects are being held back in rural areas due to inflated material prices, MPs have warned. In a House of Commons adjournment on infrastructure procurement on Monday (20 February), two MPs from the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) argued that creating a centralised access point for…

Multiplex has started construction work on a 50-storey residential tower at Bankside Yards by the River Thames in central London. The Australian contractor is working with building-frame subcontractor Keltbray and facade subcontractor Scheldebouw on the 250-flat tower, which is part of the £3bn Bankside Yards regeneration led by developer Native…