Legal

A bill to settle contractual or financial disputes faster will proceed under the new Labour government, after it took advice from the Law Commission. The Arbitration Bill will continue through parliament following the King’s Speech earlier this week. It was introduced to parliament by the previous Conservative government last November and…

Industry figures have called for clarity around product-marking regulations after the government signalled it may allow alignment with European standards to continue. This week’s King’s Speech, the first under Sir Keir Starmer's premiership, contained plans to bring forward a Product Safety and Metrology Bill. Background papers published after the speech…

Industry body Build UK has released an updated version of the Common Assessment Standard (CAS), including new questions on firms’ building-safety capabilities. The CAS is an industry-agreed set of questions and corresponding assessment standards that can pre-qualify construction suppliers for projects. The updated version (V4) contains a new Building Safety…

The latest instalment of the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) 2024 suite of contracts may have left key aspects of the Building Safety Act (BSA) unaddressed, experts have said. JCT included 13 documents in its Intermediate Building Contract (IBC) release on Wednesday (10 July). The intermediate form of contract is commonly…

The Supreme Court has ruled that most collateral warranties are not construction contracts and therefore are not subject to adjudication.  On Monday (8 July) the five Supreme Court judges unanimously found that Abbey Healthcare, the tenant of a 65-bedroom care home in north London, could not enforce an adjudication against…

The number of Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigations into falls from height in construction has dropped starkly, Construction News can reveal. Prospect, the union representing HSE inspectors, warned that the organisation has scaled back its investigations across all types and abolished its construction division. Data obtained by CN under…

Keltbray has dropped back into the red, partly due to ongoing costs related to its case against the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over the level of its fine for colluding over tender prices between 2013 and 2018. The multidisciplinary specialist swung to a pre-tax loss of £1.2m in the…

A building control company which last month saw its high-risk building inspection work taken over by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has been sanctioned by a professional disciplinary panel, it has emerged. In results published last Wednesday (26 June), a disciplinary panel for the CIC Approved Inspectors Register (CICAIR) said…

A Reading-based contractor has been fined £30,000 after the death of a delivery driver. Father of four Levi Alleyne, known as Chunky, was electrocuted while delivering crushed concrete to a construction site where BBM Contracts was principal contractor. He died after the crane arm of his lorry came into contact…

The High Court has ordered a tier two contractor to pay £102,000 to a plumbing subcontractor following a dispute about works on a Bouygues-led university project in West Sussex.  Mechanical, electrical and plumbing subcontractor J&B Hopkins was appointed by Bouygues as the subcontractor for the University of Brighton’s Moulsecoomb Campus…