£2,400,000 • Full Planning Major – Proposed erection of an office extension and an addition

£100,000 • Demolition of cottage and shed, erection of two houses

£100,000 • Installation of new shopfronts.

£100,000 • Erection of new tractor storage shed

£100,000 • Change of use from public house to 3 residential units and a shop unit, including demolition of smoking shelter and creation of light well and erection of bike shed.

£500,000 • ERECTION OF THREE STOREY OFFICE BUILDING TOGETHER WITH CAR PARKING AND PALADIN FENCING TO SITE PERIMETER

£100,000 • Extension to existing grain storage, workshop and boat storage

£100,000 • CONVERSION OF GUEST HOUSE AND HOLIDAY APARTMENTS TO FORM TWO DWELLINGS

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

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

£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

£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

£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

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

£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 bungalow and erection of pair of semi-detached 2 bedroom chalet bungalows

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

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.

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.

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.”

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:

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.”

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)

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.