A subsidiary of Stewart Milne Group overseeing the planned construction of 3,100 homes near Aberdeen has gone into administration.

FRP Advisory is now running Countesswells Development Limited (CDL) which was overseeing work at the Countesswells new town.

Around 900 homes and several commercial properties and community facilities have been built or are under construction on the site.

A spokeswoman for CDL told the Press & Journal: “We are extremely disappointed that CDL, set up to deliver Countesswells, one of the most visionary and environmentally pioneering new communities in the UK, has been placed into administration.

“We firmly believe in the future of the project and will, of course, co-operate fully with the administrators to help ensure that the vision, which many people share for Countesswells, is realised.

“In the meantime, all existing construction work on the affordable homes at Countesswells will continue, and these homes will be completed and ready to move into as planned.”

Joint administrator Tom MacLennan said: “Our immediate priority will be to secure the site and finalise current construction, including completion of much-needed affordable housing projects.

“We will be reviewing the various land bank assets in line with the development plans and will work closely with the various stakeholders on the future development of the site.”

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A Robertson Construction-led consortium has submitted a hybrid planning application for the regeneration of Atlantic Wharf in Cardiff.

A detailed application has gone in for phase one of the Butetown regeneration plan being promoted by the city council.  This sees the delivery of a new 17,000-capacity arena, hotel and associated parking.

The new arena has been designed to host the biggest names in the music industry, family shows, comedy, and sporting events.

It is anticipated, if planning is granted, that the construction of the new arena could commence in Autumn 2022.

Outline planning for the wider mixed-use masterplan would also see up to 1,150 new homes built, as well as office spaces, and leisure facilities built over seven years.

Nick Harris, group executive property director, Robertson, said: “Earlier this year we undertook public consultation events on the proposed plans and have been greatly encouraged by the positive feedback received from the local community. ”

tlantic Wharf plan

Phase 1: Construction starts on the arena and hotel in spring 2022, with completion in time for doors opening in 2025. This phase also includes building a multi-storey car park to replace the lost surface parking.

Phase 2: Businesses in the Red Dragon Centre will be relocated so works can start on a purpose-built facility to accommodate leisure, food and drink amenities. Plans include a new cultural centre incorporating the Wales Millennium Centre production space, potentially a National Art Gallery, and a ‘This is Wales’ fly-through visitor attraction.

Phase 3: A new 150,000 m2 office space delivered along with a 150-bed, four-star hotel.

Phase 4: A new neighbourhood delivering new homes and potential for retail and office space – this phase is dependent on relocation of the County Hall to a new, purpose-built building.

 

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Developer Capital & Centric has lodged plans to build a £60m urban quarter next to Stoke-on-Trent’s train station.

Plans for the Goods Yard, involve creating a mixed-use community for new homes, works spaces, shops, bars, cafes and a new public square at the Swift House site.

The project is advancing after receiving £16m from the Government’s Levelling Up Fund – one of three regeneration projects to benefit in Stoke-on-Trent up to the value of £56m.

Plans for the Goods Yard

The Goods Yard Living: Over 170 design-led flats for rent, with a mix of 1,2 and 3-bed homes. The new building is planned to feature private resident gardens, as well as resident facilities such as a café or bike repair shop, alongside other uses such as a gym or convenience store.

Signal Box: A café-bar in what is currently a derelict Network Rail signal box.Vaults Warehouse: Restoration of the stunning, locally-listed, brick vaulted, below ground warehouse to create a combined work space and leisure venue.Canalside Jetty: Opening up the water’s edge to the public and creating a potential mooring point for visiting canal boats or a water taxi.The Pavilion: A contemporary building with an industrial feel that will provide 5,000sq.ft. of floor area for workspace and/or leisure uses.

The Goods Yard Square: A bustling public square at the heart of the siteHotel: A 150-bed hotel (to be delivered as part of Phase 2)

Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric, said:“We’ve been floored with the reaction from Stoke-on-Trent and the positivity shown for the Goods Yard. We’ve designed every inch of the site to create a genuine community, with design-led new homes surrounded by new public spaces, shops, work spaces, bars and cafes.”

Capital & Centric are working in partnership with Stoke-on-Trent City Council to bring forward the landmark project.

Cllr Abi Brown, leader of the city council, said:“Being successful with not one, not two but three bids to the Levelling Up Fund was a fantastic result for our city, and a real vote of confidence in the direction we are moving. The funding will turbo charge our regeneration plans and provide new jobs, homes and investment into our local economy.

“Obviously the Goods Yard was the focus of one of our successful Levelling Up Fund bids and it’s exciting that Capital & Centric have kept the momentum going by submitting their planning application.

“This is a HS2 connected site with a massive amount of potential, and one we have been pushing forward as a fantastic development opportunity to the market for the last four years.”

Project data

Landowner Stoke-on-Trent City Council
Development Partner Capital & Centric
Architect Glenn Howells Architects
Main contractor Bowmer + Kirkland
Landscape architect Re-form Landscape Architecture
Structural engineer Civic Engineers
M&E consultant JHP

 

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Miller Homes has been fined £200,000 after polluting a Huddersfield watercourse for more than 1km.

The house builder appeared at Leeds Magistrates’ Court this week where it pleaded guilty to polluting a tributary of Grimescar Dyke with silt at Lindley Park on 8 February 2018.

It was fined £200,000, ordered to pay costs of more than £8,500 and a victim surcharge of £170.

The court heard that Miller Homes Limited purchased the land for a residential housing development in 2012. The site includes a series of tanks and lagoons for flood prevention measures.

Following reports of discolouration of Grimescar Dyke on 8 February 2018, an Environment Agency investigation traced the source of the silt pollution to an underground tank on the Miller Homes site, which is part of the development’s flood prevention measures.

Miller Homes said they had the site drainage infrastructure cleared by a contractor and this activity could have potentially impacted on the discharge from the tank.

The silt discharge impacted Grimescar Dyke for at least 1.2km. Silt pollution is hazardous to fish, blocking their gills and damaging breeding grounds. It can also damage the habitats that aquatic insects, vital food for a number of species, depend on.

Andy Swettenham, Environment Management Team Leader for the Environment Agency, said: “Miller Homes Limited did not follow its own management procedures, put in place after a previous conviction.

“Their own procedures dictate that the site should have a site specific Environment Plan and associated Surface Water Management Plan. These plans did exist but were not sufficient to prevent the pollution.

“This case emphasises the need not only for companies to have a comprehensive water management and pollution prevention plan in place but also to ensure it is fully implemented and all activities on site are properly supervised and monitored.

“If a member of the public had not reported this to us then the impact of the pollution could have been far worse.”

Miller Homes Limited was previously fined £100,000 in 2016 for a similar offence in 2013 at the same site, after which it developed its companywide management procedures.

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Private investor HLD Group has bought Wakefield-based modular building specialist the Thurston Group.

The established £37m revenue business specialises in modular construction for the education, commercial and healthcare sectors and delivered a £2.7m profit in 2020.

Founded in 1970, Thurston employs over 250 people across three sites in the east of England.

The acquisition is the largest deal in HLD Group’s 10-year history and follows recent acquisitions of the Clugston distribution services arm and steel fabrication company SP Fabrication.

Demis Ohandjanian, CEO, HLD Group said: “This is a very exciting opportunity that will benefit both entities and result in new growth opportunities for the already profitable Thurston Group. 

“We’re also delighted to have the opportunity to work with existing company management, who will remain within the business.  

“Our intention is to ensure the continuation of Thurston Group’s strong organic growth, while introducing new revenue opportunities that will result in a substantial upsizing of the business over the next 3-5 years. ”

The acquisition was facilitated by Independent Growth Finance, through a £16m asset-based lending facility that formed part of the total acquisition cost. 

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The government has unveiled the “biggest ever public investment in Britain’s rail network” with £96bn pledged to deliver faster journeys for people across the North and the Midlands.

But a lot of the programme is money previously committed and savings from scrapping HS2’s eastern leg to Leeds. An £18bn cheaper version of the Northern Powerhouse Rail plan has also been adopted.

The original Hs2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail plans were costed at £185m

The Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) will see construction work including:

Three-new-high-speed-lines-covering-110-miles

Complete HS2 from Crewe to Manchester, with new stations at Manchester Airport and Manchester Piccadillya new high-speed line between Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway. Trains will continue to central Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield on an upgraded and electrified Midland Main Linedelivering Northern Powerhouse Rail through a new high-speed line between Warrington, Manchester and Marsden in Yorkshire as in the first of the options originally put forward in 2019.a study to look at the best way to take HS2 trains to Leeds, including capacity at Leeds Station.

The upgrading or electrification of 3 existing lines:

the complete electrification of the Midland Main Line from London to Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.a programme of rapid upgrades to the East Coast Main Line to the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the North East. Journey times will be up to 25 minutes faster than nowfull electrification and upgrade of the Transpennine Main Line between Manchester, Leeds and York as part of delivering the first phase of NPR, installing full digital signalling, with longer sections of three- and four-tracking to allow fast trains to overtake stopping services, and increase through passenger services by 20%. An additional £625 million in new funding has been confirmed today to progress the Transpennine Route Upgradein total, electrification of more than 180 miles of route, meaning that 75% of the country’s main lines will be electric, to meet the ambition of removing all diesel-only trains from the network by 2040, as part of our commitment to reach Net Zero by 2050.

The freeing up of money to improve local services and integrate them properly with HS2 and NPR

a new mass transit system for Leeds and West Yorkshire, righting the wrong that Leeds is the largest city in Western Europe without one. There will be £200 million of immediate funding to plan the project and start building it, and we commit to supporting West Yorkshire Combined Authority over the long term to ensure that this time, it gets doneseparately, we could halve journey times between Bradford and Leeds, to be as low as 12 minutesgreater connectivity benefits between the West and East Midlands in comparison to previous plan and progressing work on options to complete Midlands Rail Hub, dramatically increasing local services through central Birmingham and across the Midlands and connecting them better to HS2investment to deliver a programme of fares, ticketing and retail reform including the roll out of contactless pay-as-you-go ticketing at commuter stations in the Midlands and North, ending ticket queues and tackling confusion about fares by automatically ensuring that you are charged the best price. The government will also drive towards rolling out digital ticketing across the whole network

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “My mission is to level up opportunity across our country, which is why we’re making train journeys faster and more reliable through the biggest ever public investment in our rail network.

“Levelling up has to be for everyone, not just the biggest cities. That’s why we will transform transport links between our biggest cities and smaller towns, ensuring we improve both long-distance and vital local services and enabling people to move more freely across the country wherever they are.”

Construction leaders have given the revised plans a lukewarm response.

Director of Policy at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Chris Richards said: “Today’s decision on HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail will be a blow for many. Decisions are always subject to political review, but it has taken us 12 years to get nowhere – we have to make the next 12 about progress.

“The detailed background work for the schemes mentioned today has already been donewe can therefore shift right away to planning and ensuring we are maximising public benefit We expect to see a delivery plan in the next 12 months, otherwise today’s announcement is a further step on the journey to nowhere.”

Andy Bell, director at Ramboll in the UK, and chair of ACE’s transport group, said: “Just 18 months ago the Prime Minister told Parliament in a statement following the Oakervee review, that it ‘does not make any sense’ to build Northern Powerhouse Rail without HS2 and the Government’s strategy was to do both ‘simultaneously’.

“Clearly the pandemic has strained public finances since then, but another change of approach does not help an engineering sector scaling up skills and resources – at a time of global demand for rail expertise – around what appeared to be clear commitments and pledges.”

The government added: “The new plans, using a mixture of new-build high-speed line and upgraded conventional lines, were drawn up after it became clear that the full HS2 and NPR schemes as originally proposed would have cost up to £185 billion and not entered service until the early to mid-2040s.”

Darren Caplan, Chief Executive of the Railway Industry Association (RIA), said: “It is worrying that this scheme has been scaled back. Northern Powerhouse Rail will be essential in connecting up towns and cities in the North of England, alongside delivery of the Transpennine Route Upgrade.

“This project has been promised time and time again since 2014, with millions of pounds spent on its design and shovels ready to go. These plans being torn up will only add yet more costs and delay work.”

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The Department for Education is set to confirm contractors who have won places on its £7bn school building programme over the next four years.

The Enquirer understands a number of new names will be on the roster for the schools and further education colleges mega framework.

The tender race started back in January to become part of the latest panel of preferred contractors to refresh the current list of 33 incumbents.

Firms have been bidding for 22 lots. For high-value projects over £12m, England is being split again into north and south regional panels of building contractors.

Medium value projects between around £5m and £12m will be divided into eight regional lots and lower value schemes a dozen regional lots.

Winners are being given the good news now with an official announcement by the the government due within the days.

One bidder said: “It’s been a long drawn-out bidding process and a lot of work but it will be worth it because there’s a decent chunk of work in the pipeline.”

Boris Johnson has appeared to confirm reports that the eastern leg of HS2 has been scrapped.

The Prime Minister returned to his former role as a journalist today penning a column in the Yorkshire Post trumpeting rail improvement plans for the region.

The £96bn Integrated Rail Plan will help transform services across the Midlands and north of England cutting journey times ten years earlier than planned.

Full details of the plan will finally be revealed by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps later today.

Johnson said: “HS2 will come to Sheffield, meaning a trip to or from London will take just 1 hour 27 minutes – precisely the same as under the old HS2 plans, and fully half an hour faster than now. And we’ll look at how to get HS2 to Leeds too, with a new study on the best way to make it happen.

“But high-speed rail is grindingly slow to build. Under the original blueprint, first drawn up more than a decade ago, Yorkshire would have not have seen the benefits of our investment until at least the 2040s.

“Levelling up can’t wait that long. And towns like Wakefield, Doncaster, Dewsbury and Huddersfield would have suffered as trains were taken off the existing main lines.

“So rather than just waiting for another two decades for a scheme that snubs much of Yorkshire, we will do more, and sooner.”

HS2 was originally meant to connect London with the city centres of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.

It now appears a shorter high-speed route will be created from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway, with the HS2 trains then running as far as Sheffield on mainline tracks.

Developer British Land has signed the first major building contracts for the vast Canada Water regeneration scheme in London.

Wates, Mace and McAleer and Rushe have secured the first three jobs which are together work up to £300m.

Enabling works are underway at British Land’s 53 acre, mixed-use scheme in Southwark, which will deliver up to 3,000 homes.

The first three buildings will be net zero embodied carbon calling for innovative new approaches. Operational carbon will be reduced by using electricity rather than gas for heating.

On the largest contract, the A1 tower secured by Wates, heat will be recycled from offices into the building, which British Land said was an industry first.

First Phase 1 buildings at Canada Water

Wates contract – Plot A1 – a 270,000 sq ft tower for 186 build to sell homes

Adjacent to Canada Water station, plot A will consist of a 5-storey podium and 35 storeys of housing above

Mace contract – Plot A2 – a 250,000 sq ft office-led project including a 56,000 sq ft leisure centre

Offices and leisure situated next to the new residential tower

McAleer contract – Plot K1 – a building solely for 79 affordable homes.

K1 plot plan for affordable housing designed by architect Morris + Company

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Willmott Dixon has been selected by West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service to deliver a £21m fire service training centre and fire station.

It’s the latest in a series of ‘blue-light’ projects for Willmott Dixon and follows the handover last month of a new HQ for Merseyside Police in the centre of Liverpool.

The scheme in Horsham at a site off the A24 at Highwood Mill was procured using the SCF framework for on behalf of West Sussex County Council.

Russell Miller, director at Willmott Dixon’s Crawley office, said key features of the project included a combined training tower and breathing apparatus facility, and a realistic live-fire training area.

The high-tech premises will also include accommodation for new recruit training, an incident command training facility, realistic road traffic collision training area and rooms for digital simulations.

New facility will use renewable energy sources such as solar panels and air source heat pumps to provide heating, as well as electric vehicle charging points

Chief Fire Officer, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, said: “This is a fantastic commitment from the county council to the training and development of all of our staff, and one which is going to have an incredible impact upon our service. I cannot wait for work to begin to turn these plans into a fully functional fire station and training centre.”

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