News

A Construction Skills Mission Board will oversee a £600m package aimed at training 60,000 construction workers by 2029, including 10 new Technical Excellence Colleges, the government has announced. The new colleges will be backed by £100m of public funding and will focus on developing advanced technical training in trades and…

Data centre jobs are expected to drive commercial construction growth in the next two years, according to two new reports. PWC’s construction and housebuilding outlook, which covers 2025-27, said commercial activity’s decline in 2024 was softened by data centre growth, most notably Google’s £800m project in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire (pictured).…

More than 8,300 bounce back loans issued to the construction sector during the pandemic are suspected to have been fraudulent, Construction News can reveal. The loans, issued from May 2020 as emergency relief of up to £50,000 for small companies, were backed by 100 per cent government guarantees. Data obtained…

A mesothelioma campaign group is urging the government to ban Altrad UK, its parent company and its subsidiaries from future public-sector work. Its call followed the decision by Altrad UK chief executive Ran Oren (pictured) not to appear before the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Occupational Safety and Health. The…

Plant manufacturers and operators have raised concerns that a change in the law over the operational weight of mobile concrete mixers could have financial implications for the sector. But this Tuesday (18 March), a two-year government inquiry rejected their calls for the vehicles to be exempt from standard weight restrictions. An…

Administrators for different companies within the former M Price Group are disputing the real extent of inter-company loans owed to each other, with little information to go on. In a new report, administrators from Seneca IP have revealed complications in settling the companies’ debts and repaying creditors. The 143-year-old cladding…

A senior appointment at a major civils contractor and a new regeneration role for a former Crown Estate director were the main recruitment stories this week. Costain announced the appointment of Alistair Geddes as its rail sector director on Monday (17 March). The contractor said that Geddes – who is…

The government is complacent about construction sector capacity shortages that risk undermining its plans to remediate dangerous cladding in England, MPs have said. A new report from parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released today (21 March) said far too many people were trapped in unsafe homes, facing financial uncertainty and…

Plans for the UK’s largest film studio, which would have been built by collapsed contractor ISG, have officially been scrapped. The £700m Sunset Waltham Cross Studios project, just off the M25 in Hertfordshire, was meant to be developed by Blackstone and US-studio firm Hudson Pacific Properties. Announced in 2021, the…

Only one in 10 emergency Covid loans issued to building companies have been paid back, Construction News can reveal. As the fifth anniversary of the first Covid lockdown in the UK approaches, an investigation by CN has shown that just 30,282 (11.6 per cent) of the 260,912 loans issued to…