Legal

More than 4,800 Covid loans issued to construction companies are suspected to have been fraudulent, Construction News can reveal. As the pandemic took hold three years ago, the government created emergency loan schemes designed to ensure banks lent money to businesses despite the introduction of unprecedented social restrictions. These included…

A former Crossrail worker has said he was fired and blacklisted after raising concerns about health and safety. In a statement read out in the High Court today, Daniel Collins said there was a “culture of hostility” towards trade union activists in construction, which led to him being blacklisted from…

Last month the UK government published a landmark agreement which – if ratified – will ease the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the British mainland. But what will the deal mean for builders either side of the Irish Sea? For embattled UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, the Windsor…

Galliford Try is battling an £11.5m lawsuit over a defective funicular rail line in the Scottish mountains. Morrison Construction, which is now owned by Galliford Try, scooped a £17m contract to build the 1,970-metre-long Cairngorm Mountain Railway back in 1999. The funicular opened in December 2001, five years before Galliford…

Three people have been jailed for their roles in a gang that sold £1.3m of stolen plant machinery, with four others given suspended sentences. All the sentences related to the sale of 46 plant machines that were stolen, mainly from North West England, between 2015 and 2018. The machines were…

Willmott Dixon has failed in its bid to get compensation from Wolverhampton council for project delays. The contractor had claimed it was owed money in relation to a £48.1m job renovating Civic Halls in Wolverhampton. Willmott Dixon scooped the job back in September 2019 via its spot on the Scape…

Winvic has been hit with a £160,000 fine and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs for polluting a brook in the East Midlands. The contractor worked on the £67m East Midlands Gateway (EMG), where it built a strategic rail freight interchange that included a rail interchange hub and 10 logistics plots for the…

McLaren Construction is being sued by the owner of an industrial distribution warehouse in north London for alleged poor design and construction. Prudential Assurance claims breach of contract and is demanding damages of more than £14m to cover the cost of repairs to Enotria House in Brent. In a document…

Quintain and John Sisk & Son have secured a new legal order to keep trespassers off cranes overlooking Wembley Stadium. Sisk is delivering a new £220m neighbourhood called North East Lands at Wembley Park in north London. It will eventually include more than 2,000 new homes, public realm and a…

The City of London Corporation has called in lawyers to help it resolve a dispute with housebuilder Redrow over “potentially serious” fire safety concerns in a high-rise tower block. In 2013, the corporation leased 16-storey former YMCA building Blake Tower, which is in the Barbican Estate, to Redrow. The housebuilder…