Government

For the first time in 14 years a Labour Party prime minister will preside in 10 Downing Street. Keir Starmer forming a new government today (5 July) after winning a majority of 172 seats. The party is expected to boost worker rights and union powers as part of forthcoming labour…

It’s official: after 14 years, the Conservative Party’s time in government has ended. Five prime ministers, 16 construction ministers and 16 housing ministers on, what will we remember as the party’s biggest legacy for construction? Austerity The coalition government led by David Cameron (pictured on the right) first took the…

Mace senior executive Mike Reader has been elected to parliament as a Labour MP. Reader won his Northampton South constituency by 4,071 votes over the incumbent Conservative candidate, in a swing of 7.6 per cent. In his victory speech, he said: “We are realistic about the scale of the challenges…

A manager at the National Federation of Builders (NFB) is vying to become a member of parliament in today’s general election. Sean Houlston, who manages membership services at the trade body, is standing for the Conservative Party in the newly-created constituency of Widnes and Halewood in Cheshire. Houlston describes himself…

The Labour Party wants to implement planning reforms in an effort to supercharge housebuilding as soon as it takes office if it wins Thursday’s election. In an interview with The Times, party leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said they would “hit the ground running” and initiate…

A quarter of all the cladding remediation projects in England have been completed, seven years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Of the 4,374 buildings identified in England with dangerous cladding by the end of May 2024, 1,088 have been remediated to completion, according to government statistics published yesterday. Buildings in…

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has called for cuts to VAT for retrofit work, an RAAC remediation fund and a ban on new nuclear power stations in its election manifesto. The pro-independence party is not standing in seats outside Scotland and so cannot win enough MPs to form the next…

Construction was the worst hit industry for insolvencies in the year to April 2024, the Insolvency Service has revealed. Some 4,401 construction companies in England and Wales registered as insolvent in the period – 18 per cent of all businesses to do so. The figure is almost 500 more than…

Reform UK has pledged to incentivise new construction technology and brownfield development in its manifesto published on Monday (17 June). The party’s “contract” with the electorate would offer unspecified incentives for modular construction and digital technology to “speed up building”. Reform also pledged to “fast-track” planning and tax incentives for…

Parliamentary authorities expect to spend nearly £2m on procuring a contractor to repair the Palace of Westminster’s tallest structure, the Victoria Tower, after botching the first tender. Construction News revealed in April that the tender for the £95m job had to be re-run after errors were made in documents used…