The family of the owner of a collapsed contractor have been ordered to pay a council’s £1m costs in full, years after losing a legal battle over a bus station job. Close relatives of the late owner of Thomas Barnes & Sons – which is now insolvent – unsuccessfully took…
The High Court has dismissed a judicial review request brought by steel manufacturer ArcelorMittal against plans to redevelop the Chatham Docks industrial site in Kent. Developer Peel Waters was granted outline planning permission by Medway Council in November 2024 to demolish and redevelop the 31,000 square metre site. It includes…
Administrators for Henry Construction Projects say there could be sufficient funds to pay some of the £43m owed to its supply chain if legal proceedings are successful. In their latest progress report, joint administrators David Hudson and Geoffrey Rowley of FRP Advisory said they were aware of more than 5,000…
A London-based construction firm and its director have been fined a total of £18,000 after they failed to comply with enforcement notices issued by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Director Vasilis Paraskeva and his company VNP Constructions Ltd were appointed to work on a project to convert a former…
A High Court judge has ruled that a self-employed bricklayer who died of mesothelioma was directly recruited and employed by a contractor in an asbestos claim brought by his widow. Eric Alger worked as a bricklayer at the Prince Regent Hotel and Church refurbishment project on Manor Road, Chigwell, in…
A contractor has been ordered to pay almost £22,000 after it lost its appeal against paying the Construction Industry Training Board’s (CITB) levy. Surrey-based MJL Construction Associates took the CITB to an employment tribunal in Bury St Edmunds last November to dispute paying levies due for 2021 and 2022. According…
The owners of the world’s second-largest movie set, Shepperton Studios Limited (SSL), and contractor Laing O’Rourke have filed lawsuits against each other over a disputed invoice. SSL is the owner of Surrey-based, 139,354 square metre Shepperton Studios, which boasts Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix as major tenants. On 12 December,…
A client that accused a defunct specialist contractor of considering lying about personnel working on a “defective” job has agreed to pay a settlement to the firm. FEL Group, which made and installed infrastructure for data centres, went into administration in June 2022. A month before, it had issued a…
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has reduced the fines for two former Carillion finance directors over their part in misleading statements being issued by the firm. Richard Adam and Zafar Khan were both aware of serious financial troubles in Carillion’s UK construction business but failed to reflect this in company…
The number of immigration arrests on UK construction premises during the first nine months of 2025 was almost three times the 2024 figure and the highest for at least a decade. Data supplied to Construction News under the Freedom of Information Act showed that from January to September there were…
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