£600,000 • Erection of eight dwellings together with associated access, parking and landscaping

£100,000 • Erection of two detached dwelling houses, parking and associated works

£100,000 • Redevelopment of parking court to construct 2 no. large family houses with associated works.

£200,000 • Erection of single-storey office and showroom extension

£15,000,000 • Erection of 200 Residential Units and Associated Roads, Parking, Open Space, Footpaths and SUDs.

£100,000 • Listed building consent for the construction of 1 x new dwelling conversion of 2 x existing properties into one for short term residential letting increase existing residential curtilage over existing agricultural land to provide necessary access resubmis

£4,800,000 • Demolition of existing two storey care home and erection of a new 80 bed care home up to 4 storeys in height, with associated car parking and landscaping

£1,500,000 • Residential development comprising of 20 flats

£100,000 • Conversion of four bedroom family dwellinghouse to provide 3 self contained residential flats comprising 1 x 4 bed, 1 x 2 bed and 1 x 1 bed together with the excavation of the front basement to provide a lightwell.

£100,000 • Demolition of existing dwelling and erection of 2 x 2 bed semi-detached dwellings

£100,000 • Demolition of bungalow and erection of pair of semi-detached 2 bedroom chalet bungalows

Southampton Football Club’s St Mary’s stadium is set to be the first in Europe to have LED floodlights.

Installation is taking place ahead of the start of the forthcoming season.

It comes 63 years after the club’s old ground, The Dell, made history as the first in England to have permanent floodlights installed.

Delivered by Eastleigh-based lighting developers Vision Accendo, the new system will provide a higher quality of broadcast lighting as well as significantly reducing the amount of energy used when compared to traditional metal halide floodlights, the club says.

Unlike the previous halide system, the new LEDs can be instantly switched on and off without the need for a warm up period, which further adds to the system’s energy saving credentials.

Stadium facilities manager Mark Humby said: “Since being introduced to Ian Williams and Calvin Caunter of Vision Accendo back in February, we have worked very closely to make sure we reach all the technical criteria stipulated by the Premier League. It has been a frantic but extremely interesting four months.

“Our first issue was to make sure the stadium roof structure could take the added weight of the new floodlight system required to produce the correct lighting levels.  During this process I have been introduced to the technical term ‘flicker’ which only causes an issue during slow motion and super-slow motion footage. By using a top quality LED product we have all but removed this issue which can be seen on the majority of sporting footage that’s produced under floodlit conditions.

“We can now look forward to installing a superior innovative lighting solution that will enhance the viewing experience of both the fan in the stadium and the armchair supporter.”

On 1st October 1951 The Dell became the first venue to host a competitive match under floodlights when Southampton reserves faced Tottenham Reserves in a Football Combination fixture.

The Scottish government has set out plans for an additional £220m for building schools and hospitals.

Finance secretary John Swinney said that the projects would be delivered as part of a £1bon extension of the non-profit distributing (NPD) programme.

An additional £100m is being allocated to the Schools for the Future programme, taking the budget to £900m, while £120m in NPD investment will fund a new maternity hospital and a new cancer centre on the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary Campus.

Full details of the infrastructure projects within the planned £1bn extension to the programme will be in the autumn draft budget.

NPD is Scotland’s solution to PFI profiteering. It puts a limit on the private sector returns and returns any surplus to the public sector.

Other major projects in the NPD pipeline include:

• M8 M73 M74 motorway improvements: £310m – reached financial close February 2014 – in construction

• City of Glasgow College: £193m – reached financial close August 2013 – in construction

• Inverness College: £45m – reached financial close May 2013 – Miller currently building it.

• Ayrshire College, Kilmarnock Campus:  £48m – reached financial close on June 2014 – McLaughlin &Harvey started construction this week.

• NHS Lothian Royal Hospital for Sick Children/Department of Clinical Neurosciences: £155m – ­a Brookfield Multiplex consortium selected is expected to start construction in October 2014.

• National Centre for the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service projects: £36m – Interserve Kajima was appointed in March 2014 and starts construction in August 2014.

• NHS Ayrshire & Arran Acute Mental Health & North Ayrshire Community Hospital: £48m –  Balfour Beatty starts construction July 2014.

• AWPR/Balmedie-Tipperty road scheme: £472m – Balfour Beatty’s Connect consortium is expected to start construction before end of 2014 with completion in spring 2018.

• NHS Dumfries & Galloway Royal Acute Services Redevelopment Project: £203m –  expected to start construction in 2015.

The latest registration statistics from the National House-Building Council (NHBC) suggest that the house-building boom might have peaked.

NHBC new home registrations in May 2014 were down 5% on the same month last year, at 13,220 compared to 13,914 in May 2013.

May was the peak month for 2013 and so far has also been the peak month for 2014.

However, for the rolling quarter March to May 2014, the total of 37,975 new homes registered with NHBC was up 4% on the 36,487 registered in the same three month period last year. 

Private sector registrations in March-May 2014 increased by 6% (28,222), compared with the same period in 2013 (26,607). Public sector registrations in the quarter decreased by 1% (9,753) compared with the same period a year before (9,880).

NHBC chief executive Mike Quinton said the industry remained in growth mode.“House-building levels have remained steady, continuing through May and consolidating the high volumes seen in 2013,” he said. “Overall we are seeing steady growth on last year’s exceptional figures and we obviously hope that this will continue throughout the remainder of the year as the sector continues its impressive recovery.”

Full regional breakdown of total new homes registered March-May 2014 by region/country:

An Essex joinery firm has been fined for safety failings after an employee was crushed by half a tonne of fibreboard (MDF) at its premises in Basildon.

The 50-year-old man suffered two collapsed lungs, a broken collar bone, five broken ribs and a gash to his head from the incident on 26th September 2013. He was hospitalised for two weeks and returned to work on light duties in January 2014.

Specialist Joinery Projects Ltd was yesterday (26th June) prosecuted by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) after it found safety shortcomings.

Basildon magistrates heard that the employee was working in the joinery shop of the factory, selecting MDF boards to be cut down to size. The boards were stored vertically and leant against racking. He had removed three boards, but as he removed the fourth, a suction effect caused a further 15 of the 30kg boards to topple over on top of him, knocking him over. As he fell he gashed his head on a stack of timber, and was then pinned to the concrete floor under the weight of the boards for several minutes before being freed.

HSE said the boards should have been secured and racked.

Specialist Joinery Projects Ltd of Bowlers Court, Honywood Road, Basildon, Essex, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £598 in costs after pleading guilty to a single breach of the Work at Height Regulations 2005.

Speaking after the hearing, HSE inspector Kim Tichias said: “The risks from falling timber and board material in the wood-working industry are well-known. There have been a number of incidents in recent years, including fatalities, where poorly-stored and unsecured boards have fallen on workers.

“Specialist Joinery Projects should have ensured boarding was secure and that there was a safe process for using and handling boarding for employees to follow. Simple and relatively inexpensive control measures, such as racking, would have prevented this incident and the serious injuries incurred by this worker.”

Balfour Beatty has recruited four new managers to the top of its UK and Ireland construction team.

The company said that the appointments have been made to strengthen the management of its major projects, regional and engineering services business streams.

Last month Balfour Beatty chief executive Andrew McNaughton resigned just a year into the job after a series of management failings across various divisions were uncovered.

The new appointments include Alun Williams (above), previously of Laing O’Rourke and Jacobs, who has been appointed to a new position of executive general manager for the energy and power sector in Balfour Beatty’s major projects division. He reports to Stephen Tarr, managing director of major projects.

In August, Paul Gandy (below) will join from Lend Lease to lead a new major construction delivery unit for the design and construction of property schemes in London and the southeast. At Lend Lease he has been head of operations and recently operations director on the £1.2 billion Elephant & Castle regeneration project. At Balfour Beatty he will report to regional managing director Mark Cutler.

There are two new senior managers joining Balfour Beatty’s engineering services division next month. Simon Higginson (below left) will join as commercial director. He also joins form Lend Lease but spent his early career at Balfour Beatty as a quantity surveyor.

Barry De Falco (below right) joins from TClarke as operations director for engineering services in London and the southeast, reporting to regional director Bob Vickers.

Balfour Beatty Construction Services UK chief executive officer Nick Pollard said:  “I am delighted to welcome four new seasoned industry leaders to Balfour Beatty. We continue to attract and retain the best UK talent and leaders within our industry to collaborate with our customers, drive innovation and improve safety, productivity, quality and profits.”

The National Audit Office (NAO) is putting the squeeze on the government for awarding £16.6bn of energy contracts without competition.

In a report out today, the government spending watchdog says that it is “not convinced that the government sufficiently protected consumers’ interests by awarding without competition £16.6 billion worth of early contracts to eight renewable generation projects at risk of investment delay”.

It said that the decision could result in contractors making more profit than they otherwise would have. It also limits the amount of remaining budget for future projects.

In 2013, the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) launched the Final Investment Decision enabling for Renewables (FIDeR) scheme. This was to prevent unnecessary delays to investment in new renewable generation, while DECC established the Contracts for Difference regime, which will support such projects commissioned from 1 April 2015.

The NAO said that awarding the contracts early gave DECC certainty of support to the contractors at least five months earlier than they could have achieved under the full Contract for Difference regime. But the lack of competition may have increased costs to consumers. The Department proceeded with the FIDeR scheme to secure continuing investment in new renewable generation, despite acknowledging that competitive pricing might reveal subsequently that its administratively set strike prices in some cases were too high. The NAO said that it was not clear that the full scale of these commitments was needed so soon to meet the UK’s 2020 renewable energy target. The early contracts have already committed 58% of the funds available for renewables Contracts for Difference to 2020-21.

The contracts contain provisions that require active management to protect value for money for consumers. Active and effective management of these provisions is essential to ensure contract costs are minimized for consumers.

NAO chief Amyas Morse said: “The Department of Energy & Climate Change awarded the early contracts without price competition to avoid an investment gap. In so doing it has brought forward investment decisions by at least five months. The investments supported should contribute towards the UK’s achieving its renewable energy target in 2020, but it is not clear that awarding fewer early contracts would have put the achievement of that target at risk. As the Contracts for Difference regime has the potential to secure better value for consumers through price competition, committing so much of the available funding through early contracts, without competition, has limited the Department’s opportunity to secure better value for money.”

Margaret Hodge, chair of the House of Commons public accounts committee, expressed ‘frustration’ at the DECC’s failure to put in place a mechanism for recouping excessive profits of private contractors. “The UK faces a big challenge to move to a more sustainable electricity market and deliver on our climate change commitments. These early contracts are an important part of that,” she said. “DECC is aiming to generate 30% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. It awarded these contracts to eightprojects, without price competition, at a cost to consumers of £16.6bn. Yet between them these projects will generate just 5% of the renewable electricity required. At the same time by committing so much funding up front the department has limited its options for future investments.

“I am also frustrated that, despite the huge consumer subsidy that has gone into supporting these projects, the department has failed to put in place any arrangements to recoup consumers’ money if providers make bigger-than-expected profits from these projects. This is an issue we have raised as a committee before: private providers must not be allowed to make excessive profits at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.”

Manchester City Football Club has released a video that shows the construction sequence for a new tier on the South Stand of its Etihad stadium.

The club has also announced plans for a further expansion of the stadium – originally built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games – to take its capacity to 61,000.

Current capacity of the stadium is just under 48,000. Contractor Laing O’Rourke began work in March 2014 to add 6,000 seats above the South Stand. (Laing built the stadium in the first place.) A video of this procedure is shown below.

The second phase of the expansion involves adding three further rows of seats pitch-side to get in another 1200 seats or so. Both of these projects are scheduled to be completed by next summer in time for the start of the 2015/16 season. Approximately 160 people will be employed through the project at its peak, the club said.

Planning permission has also been granted for a third phase that could see a further 6,000 seats added.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles has set out how three government initiatives will further help to boost house-building.

While the Chancellor has been taking the headlines for Help to Buy mortgage assistance schemes to help the demand side, the communities secretary has schemes of his own to boost the supply side.

Yesterday Mr Pickles he announced millions of pounds of investment to boost the supply of new homes.

Speaking at the Chartered Institute for Housing conference in Manchester, Mr Pickles said that considerable progress had been made to “fix the broken housing market” but that there is still more to do.

The three initiatives he highlighted were:

• the local infrastructure fund, which is providing £53m to accelerate construction of more than 7,000 homes on large developments in Manchester, Medway, Swindon and Kettering. These new deals will take the number of homes supported by the fund past 80,000 since the scheme began in 2012.
• the build to rent programme is providing £49m to support three new schemes in Hampshire and Croydon. The funding will help deliver at least 540 homes specifically for private rent, bringing the total number of homes supported through the programme so far to over 1,600
• promotion of self-build through a ‘serviced plots’ scheme. A prospectus will be published for a £150m investment fund for 10,000 ‘serviced plots’. This funding is expected to help bring forward ‘shovel ready’ sites where people can hire a developer to build their own custom-build home.

Mr Pickles said that more than 445,000 new homes had been built in the past four years.

“The resurgence in house building is clear evidence that the government’s long-term economic plan is working, but there is still more to do,” he said. “The investment we’re announcing today will help us meet this challenge by driving up the supply of new homes in every corner of the housing market. From new places for rent to people designing to those building their own properties – we will support and deliver the homes this country needs.”

Local infrastructure fund

The latest four sites to be supported are:

• Manchester City Fringe: £18.8m will help unlock 1,500 new homes on the Collyhurst, Ancoats and Lower Irk Valley. The investment will pay for roads and land acquisition needed to support the delivery of the scheme, which will ultimately include 7,000 homes
• Medway Valley: £19.5m will kick-start a 2,350-home development. The investment will pay for the Medway Valley Crossing to make possible two remaining residential sites on the east bank of the River Medway
• Tadpole Farm: £5.5m will pay for infrastructure to pave the way for a 1,695-home urban extension to the north of Swindon.
• Kettering: £14.5m will provide roads and drainage infrastructure for the first 1,750 new homes of a proposed 5,500 urban extension, business and energy park to the east of Kettering.

Build to Rent

The funding announced yesterday will support the delivery of new homes for private rent on three new sites under the Build to Rent programme, bringing the total to more than 1,600 homes.

• Berewood, Hampshire: £6.3m loan for  106 new homes
• Aldershot, Hampshire: £23.7m loan for 219 new homes
• Croydon, south London: £19.8m loan for 216 new homes

Serviced plots prospectus

A new £150m investment fund is expected to bring forward up to 10,000 serviced building plots for custom build housing. The fund is intended to incentivise a different way of bringing forward land for development, for sites of 10 homes or more.

The fund is available to developers and community groups, either working individually or as part of a joint venture with individual custom builders or a local authority. The developer will prepare the plots for sale and may choose to work with individuals to build they home they want, subject to final approval from the local council of their plans. Alternatively individuals can buy a plot and then commission their own builder to build their home for them.

A demonstration site at Park Prewett, near Basingstoke, will begin shortly, the government said.

Six major construction contractors last year shared between them £2.2bn of taxpayers’ money, a new analysis has shown.

The Institute for Government and the Spend Network have together compiled data on all the money that central and local government spent on contractors in 2013. IT contactors came out on top, with HP getting £1.7bn and Capgemini getting just over £1.0bn.

Construction’s biggest beneficiary was Kier, which got £603m of public money last year, the research indicates. Kier’s total group revenue in 2013 was £1.4bn.

Carillion got £397m from government. Balfour Beatty got £371m.

According to the data, the top 20 beneficiaries of public money in  2013 were:

• HP, IT: £1,701,193,786
• Capgemini, IT: £1,010,739,214
• Capita, Outsourcing: £803,333,738
• BT, Telecommunications: £753,976,060
• Telereal Trillium, Facilities: £628,068,375
• Kier, Construction: £602,979,737
• Serco, Outsourcing: £445,193,324
• Fujitsu, IT: £415,393,510
• Atos IT, IT: £401,200,020
• Carillion, Construction: £397,294,140
• Balfour Beatty, Construction: £371,264,042
• IBM, IT: £365,915,278
• Amey, Construction: £314,256,127
• Willmott Dixon, Construction: £301,813,720
• Veolia, Waste management: £293,010,554
• Interserve, Facilities: £341,259,736
• CSC, IT: £306,279,738
• Babcock, Defence: £293,170,856
• EDF Energy, Utilities: £281,556,791
• BAM, Construction: £195,886,561

(Source: Institute for Government/Spend Network/BBC)

Middlesbrough Football Club has selected WSP as its preferred consultant for structural engineering works at is Riverside Stadium and training ground.

WSP will also conduct the club’s annual safety inspection.

WSP has worked on stadiums around the world. Closer to Middlesbrough, it  was the structural engineer behind the redevelopment of St James Park Stadium for Newcastle United Football Club. This included increasing the stadium’s capacity by 6,500 and the building of the largest single-span glazed cantilever roof and suspended glass gables in Europe.

Middlesbrough Football Club chief operating officer Mark Ellis said: “We are delighted to be able to appoint a local Teesside business as our preferred consultant for structural engineering and the fact that many of their staff are Boro fans is a bonus.  We have an excellent stadium at the Riverside and with the help of WSP we can ensure that our supporters can enjoy games in a safe and secure environment.”

The British Safety Council has launched a health & safety qualification that, from 1 July 2014, can be used to obtain a CSCS Green Card.

The Level 1 Award in Health & Safety in a Construction Environment is aimed at people seeking work or already working in non-skilled roles in the construction industry. Designed to be delivered by employers, private training providers, schools and colleges, the qualification provides essential knowledge and understanding of health and safety hazards and precautions. Successful completion enables learners to apply for the Construction Skills Certificate Scheme (CSCS) Green Card (Labourer), which provides access to UK construction sites as a non-skilled worker.

From 1 July 2014, anyone wishing to obtain the CSCS Green Card (Labourer) will have to either pass a Level 1 Award in Health & Safety in a Construction Environment or hold a valid Site Safety Plus Health and Safety Awareness Course certificate. They must also pass the Construction Industry Training Board’s Operatives Health, Safety and Environmental Test in the two years prior to applying for the card.

Leeds College of Building is launching an alumni association and is appealing to former students to get in touch and join.

It has set up a dedicated registration page on its website at www.lcb.ac.uk/alumni-network.

“Since we opened in 1960, thousands of students have passed through our doors,” said principal Ian Billyard, “and feedback from lots of former students shows many are interested in joining our alumni association.”

He added: “It’s a very exciting time for Leeds College of Building, having just started work on our brand new state of the art £16m education and training facility, now is the ideal time to reach out to all of our former students – many of whom are now key players in the construction industry – and establish this alumni association.”

Costain has seen further growth in its order book in the first half of 2014, edging up past £3.2bn.

This is up 7% on the start of the year, when the order book was £3.0bn, and a new high for the company.

Awards announced in the first half of the year include appointment to Network Rail’s £2bn national electrification programme; the Crossrail northeast spur contract for Network Rail; appointment to three transmission frameworks with National Grid; and a further Barrow gas terminals contract with Centrica.

In a pre-close trading update today the company said that it also continues to maintain a strong preferred bidder position of more than £400m. More than £950 million of revenue has been secured for 2014 so far and the overall level of tendering activity remains high.

Costain will announce its interim results for the six months to 30th June 2014 in August.

The nation’s local road network is at risk while management of flood management, energy and waste all need improving, according to a report out today from the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

In fact, of all the UK’s infrastructure, only the water sector and the strategic transport network come up to scratch, but even here further investment is needed over the next five years to keep up with demand.

The ICE places no blame upon its own members whose function is to build and maintain infrastructure. The shortcomings are all the fault of government, the ICE says, for not giving enough money to infrastucture management. Engineers are exonerated.

Maintenance investment in local roads has declined by 11% in real terms from 2010/11 to 2014/15. This has left one-third of local roads in urgent need of attention.

Flood defences are not getting the money they need. Between 2015 and 2021, government will spend £1.4bn less on flood management than the Environment Agency’s estimated need.

And waste policy in England lacks direction and investment in infrastructure has suffered, the ICE says.

However, there has been overall improvement under the current coalition government, according to the ICE.

These are the findings of the ICE’s State of the Nation: Infrastructure 2014 report, which allocates a score of A to E for six broad categories of infrastructure, where A is ‘fit for the future’, B is ‘adequate for now’, C is ‘requires attention, D is ‘at risk’ and E means ‘unfit for purpose.

The scores for each category this year were:

• Local transport: D minus “at risk” (2010: D)
• Flood management: C minus “requires attention” (2010: C)
• Energy:  C minus “requires attention” (2010: D)
• Strategic Transport: B “adequate for now”  (2010: B)
• Water: B “adequate for now” (2010: B)
• Waste: C plus “requires attention”(2010 Grade: C)

The ICE said that more frequent extreme weather events will make it increasingly difficult to operate infrastructure networks and our expectations of availability will need to change.

It said there was a lack of resilience to flooding.  Its report said that resilience – including the ‘domino effect’ where the failure of one system can affect the operation of another – should be embedded into the criteria used for making decisions on infrastructure priorities.

However, it said that ultimately infrastructure will also fail in extreme events; it cannot be resilient to every eventuality. A shift in the public’s expectations on infrastructure availability is needed, according to the ICE. 

Where there have been failings, the ICE sees little or no blame to be attached to the civil engineering profession. It is all the fault of politicians, it appears to believe. Sometimes we must expect infrastructure to fail, but that’s not civil engineers’ fault either, the ICE says.

Of the ICE’s 10 recommendations for action, nine are for government improvement; one is for Environment Agency engineers to change their approach to flood defences. But even the inadequate management of flood defences is the government’s fault, it says.

ICE vice president Keith Clarke, who chaired the panel that put the report together, said: “As the 2013/14 winter floods showed, unplanned interruptions in our networks are costly to society and the economy. They happen because we are trying to run all services at all times, and are deemed unacceptable as the public expect a certain level of service. Government ultimately bears the risk for the resulting impact.

“It is becoming clear that extreme weather events will become more frequent, and it is time that factors such as availability, resilience and the ‘domino effect’ across the networks when one network fails – as we saw recently when our flood defences were overwhelmed and this in turn disrupted transport, energy, water and waste networks – are rooted into the criteria used to make decisions on which projects go ahead so new infrastructure is more ‘future proofed’.

“But, importantly, we must all recognise that our infrastructure cannot be resilient to everything and it will become more difficult to run all services in all conditions – it will also not be cost effective.  Funding will always be constrained as there are only two sources – tax and user charging – both ultimately falling on the consumer. The balance between the two is a choice for the government of the day, but irrespective of where it comes from, both are constrained resources and must be used efficiently.

“Clearly there are some difficult decisions ahead regarding just how resilient the UK should be, and also what networks can and should operate 24/7 in what conditions. We can then plan more effectively – avoiding costly unplanned disruptions – and adapt. Management of the public’s expectations on availability during adverse conditions will need to form a key part of this process. 

“The onus is on government to make these choices for public sector infrastructure, and it must also build on its efforts to provide the right regulatory incentives to improve resilience within private sector infrastructure.” he added.

ICE recommendations

On strategic decision making and leadership, government should:

1. Expand the criteria used as a basis for making decisions on priority infrastructure projects to reflect major future challenges– criteria should include resilience, availability, the pathway to a low carbon economy and better acknowledge ‘interdependencies’ across networks – or how one sector impacts on another.
2. Be prepared to make choices regarding the levels of resilience in the UK’s infrastructure networks and the appropriate levels of service/availability – and work with industry to manage public expectation.
3. Ensure the right regulatory environment exists to incentivise private infrastructure operators to build resilience into infrastructure.
4. Be appropriately resourced to make and implement decisions on key issues affecting the UK’s resilience or competitiveness, such as aviation capacity.
5. Provide more clarity, certainty and transparency for potential investors through the regularly published National Infrastructure Plan project pipeline – by including more detail on investable projects, their status, planning approval, ownership structure and revenue streams. 

On energy, local transport and flood management sectors:

6. The Environment Agency and lead local flood authorities should implement a ‘holistic approach’ to flood management, using a wider range of measures in addition to conventional flood defences – including building the physical resilience of communities by making property and infrastructure more resistant.
7. Government should provide the longer term certainty needed to improve flood resilience by committing to a long term capital and maintenance programme for flood management that protects funding beyond the current five year cycle.
8. Government should enact the secondary legislation to implement electricity market reform by the end of this parliament (March 2015), establishing long-term investor confidence and entrenching cross-party support for electricity decarbonisation.
9. Government should extend devolved transport powers and funding through the creation of more powerful, fully integrated transport authorities in city regions.
10. Government and local authorities must establish a more ambitious joint programme to clear the road maintenance backlog, and commit to a more cost-effective planned, preventative maintenance regime.

Quarrying companies are being urged to do more for the plight of the bumblebee.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) wants construction quarries to start monitoring bee populations and to adopt measures to attract them, such as planting bee-friendly trees.

Thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed in November 2012 between the BBCT and the Mineral Products Association (MPA), the quarrying industry has been helpful to bees, by protecting, creating and restoring flower-rich habitats.

The trust now wants to take this relationship to the next level.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust was established because of concerns about declining bumblebee populations. Two species have become nationally extinct and several others have declined dramatically over the past 80 years.

Since November 2012, BBCT has visited five quarries and learned how they can be surprisingly useful places for wildlife. The process often allows wildflowers to thrive, and pollinating insects like bumblebees can be abundant. There are many different habitats on quarries too and each one can be managed sensitively for bees.

Based on its work with quarries, BBCT has put together a quarry fact sheet (bumblebeeconservation.org/get-involved/managing-your-land/managing-quarries).

It is also working with Restore (www.restorequarries.eu) to share knowledge.

BBCT hopes to get more quarries thinking about what they can do for bees. Some restoration normally includes planting trees, there are some crucial trees for bees – the goat willow for example, which produces high quality nectar and pollen in March when bumblebees are emerging and need feeding up after their long hibernation.

BBCT also want quarry workers to be trained in bee identification and to start monitoring bees.

The economic value of bees, as pollinators of commercially grown insect pollinated crops in the UK, has been estimated at over £500 million per year.  As well as this commercial importance, many wild plants depend on bumblebees for pollination.

For more information on bumblebee conservation, visit http://bumblebeeconservation.org

International contractor Lend Lease has raised £696m by selling a 30% share of the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent to Land Securities.

Construction of Bluewater began in 1995 in a disused Blue Circle quarry near Dartford and opened in 1999.

Land Securities has purchased the 30% share owned by Lend Lease Europe. Lend Lease Retail Partnership still owns 25%, while M&G Real Estate and GIC own 35%, and Hermes and Aberdeen Asset Management have 10%.

After transaction costs, associated provisions and tax, the expected profit on sale of Lend Lease’s interest in Bluewater, its management rights and sundry land is expected to be approximately £265m.

Lend Lease CEO and managing director Steve McCann said that the cash proceeds would be used to pay down debt and support investment in projects including its large urban regeneration schemes in London at Elephant & Castle and The International Quarter.

Lafarge Tarmac has appointed Mark Joel as managing director of its building products business.

Lafarge Tarmac acquired Tarmac Building Products in April 2014. Mr Joel, who was previously group director of strategy and business performance for Lafarge Tarmac, will oversee Building Products’ 46 operational sites and 800 employees. 

Prior to his role within Lafarge Tarmac, he held senior roles at Tarmac, including heading up its UK aggregates, asphalt, and readymix concrete businesses.

Mr Joel said: “It’s an exciting and dynamic time for Lafarge Tarmac. The acquisition of Tarmac Building Products expands our offer and opens up new opportunities for us, particularly in the house-building sector.”

Twenty schools have received improvement notices from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) because of their inadequate control of asbestos hazards.

The HSE undertook a schools inspection programme last year to check up on asbestos issues and has now published the results.

HSE inspected a sample of 153 non-local authority schools between April 2013 and January 2014. These included independent, voluntary aided and foundation schools, free schools and academies.

The majority of schools inspected (71%) required either no further action or were given straightforward, simple advice. However, 29% (44 schools) received written advice from HSE, and 13% (20 schools) were subject to enforcement action, in the form of improvement notices.

The improvement notices set out a requirement for the schools to improve arrangements for managing asbestos. Enforcement action was taken over failures such as training staff and producing written management plans – not because staff or pupils were considered at significant risk of exposure, but because these are vital elements of the required control measures. The key group of personnel at risk from asbestos is tradespeople – particularly those undertaking maintenance activities.  The HSE said that it was “vital that schools ensure that anyone who may disturb asbestos is made aware of its location and condition”.

Compliance with the Control of Asbestos Regulations in England, Scotland and Wales showed an overall improvement compared with that found in a similar survey and inspection programme of 164 schools outside local authority control in 2010/11 where 41 improvement notices were served on 28 schools.

Geoff Cox, the head of HSE’s public services sector, said: “Over the last few years there has been a lot of work by stakeholders across the school sector to raise awareness of the duty to manage asbestos. It is really encouraging to see that awareness of the requirements has increased since our previous inspection initiative.

“That said, schools should not be under any illusion – managing asbestos requires ongoing attention. Schools now have access to a wealth of guidance setting out clear and straightforward steps to achieve and maintain compliance.

“Where duty holders fall below acceptable standards, HSE has taken, and will continue to take, enforcement action”

An untrained scaffolder had to have his leg amputated after falling from an unguarded structure, a court has heard.

Andrew Gore, 37, from Mountain Ash in the Cynon Valley, had never had any recognised training. He was helping to dismantle scaffolding outside a nursing home in Merthyr Mawr Road, Bridgend, in June 2013 when he fell four metres to the ground.

The incident was investigated by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE), which prosecuted his employer, Mills Scaffold Company Ltd, at Bridgend Magistrates yesterday (23rd June).

The court heard that the scaffold, erected by Mills Scaffold Company, was three lifts high and Mr Gore was working on the second lift. Another scaffolder was on the lift above, passing down parts of the scaffold to him, which he, in turn, passed on to a labourer on the ground.

Mr Gore was not wearing a harness and the lift was just two boards wide. The firm had failed to put any guardrails in place. Mr Gore had undone the swivel coupling at the bottom of a brace, which he then inadvertently leaned on. The brace moved and he fell to the ground, causing severe injuries. Since the incident, he has spent most of the last year in hospital and undergone several operations.

The incident was only reported to HSE six months later, when he made an insurance claim after he had to have his lower leg amputated because of an infection following the injury. The company had previously been issued with a prohibition notice by HSE in 2012 for a similar offence.

HSE’s investigation found that Mr Gore had not been given training in the safe erection or dismantling of scaffolding.

Mills Scaffold Company Ltd of Church Street, Mountain Ash, pleaded guilty to a breach of the Work at Height regulations and Reporting of Injuries Regulations, as the incident was not reported to HSE. The company was fined a total of £15,000 and ordered to pay £1,118 in costs.

HSE inspector Hayley Healey said after the hearing: “Mr Gore has suffered a great deal of pain and life changing injuries. As a single parent of two young children, one of whom he has custody for, his life has changed dramatically.

“This was a totally needless incident which could have been avoided if Mills Scaffold Company had ensured a safe system of work had been in place. And it was their responsibility to make sure trained workers were used on the scaffolding. There is plenty of industry guidance available about safely dismantling scaffolding.

“If simple methods of work had been followed, levels of competency checked and good supervision in place on site, this work could have been carried out safely. Falls from height remains one of the most common causes of fatalities and major injuries in the construction industry, with more than five incidents every day.”

A Berkshire energy company is planning to convert old Nottinghamshire coal mines into solar power plants.

Anesco has teamed up with property regeneration company Harworth Estates to redevelop former colliery sites with the development of a 30MW solar portfolio.

The ground-mounted solar installations will be operational for 25 years and, once completed, should generate enough energy to provide power for around 10,000 homes.

Anesco said that the project would begin with the development of three sites in Nottinghamshire: Welbeck Colliery in Mansfield, Gedling in Lambley and a third site in Bilsthorpe. A fourth site at Askern in South Yorkshire is awaiting planning consent.

Welbeck Colliery in Mansfield will be the first site to come online. The installation will cover an area of almost 32 acres and will generate carbon savings of around 5.11 tonnes per year, Anesco says. It will comprise of 44,160 solar panels mounted on around 15km of frames that have a combined generation capacity of 11.2MW – sufficient energy to power more than 3,450 homes in the local area.

This will be followed by 5.74MW installations at both Gedling and Bilsthorpe, and an installation in the planning stage for Askern.

CEO Adrian Pike said: “Working with landowners to develop sites likes these former collieries fits perfectly with government policy, with the Department of Energy & Climate Change pushing the focus of growth in solar to be on brownfield sites and domestic and industrial roofs. These sites are based in the midlands and north of England, which is important as we believe it is essential that solar developments are made across the UK and not just in the southwest.”

He added: “Through these installations we will not only be regenerating disused land but will be creating employment, generating renewable energy and helping to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions.”

The latest registration statistics from the National House-Building Council (NHBC) suggest that the house-building boom might have peaked.