Construction News

A 1.5% pay rise for construction workers has been agreed for 2021/22 following pay negotiations between the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) and Unite the union.

Engineers at a US university have developed a paint so white that they believe it could make a big impact in cooling buildings.

Grafton Group, the building materials distributor and DIY retailer, is mulling the sale of several of its businesses, including Buildbase.

Drywall and partitioning supplier CCF has taken delivery of the UK’s first 27-tonne curtainside battery electric vehicle (BEV).

Self-employed tradespeople have just enjoyed their best month for earnings since the start of the pandemic, according to Hudson Contract.

Highways England is hosting a trial of a new polymer-modified bitumen mix that is being described as an anti-ageing cream for roads.

Kier is trialling a new fuel-saving generator technology on a site in Lancashire.

Groundworkers from Birmingham civils contractor MV Kelly are generating a lot of love and support after a heart-warming post on social media.

The Construction Leadership Council has issued a warning to the industry that shortages of building products and materials are set to get worse before they get better.

Latest pay gap report from builders’ merchant group Travis Perkins shows that its gender pay gap has halved compared to the previous year.

The boss of a Dorset construction company has been fined £1,000 plus costs for running a site that provided no height safety protection to employees.

Thames Valley Police are appealing for witnesses after a group attacked an HS2 construction site in Buckinghamshire last Friday night.

The government has pulled the plug on its Green Homes Grant scheme, which was supposed to deliver £2bn of home improvements in the six months to March 2021.

While much of the industry is back working at full or near-full capacity, there are still nearly a quarter of a million people from across construction who are on furlough.

The Environment Agency has handed out a public rebuke to the construction industry for its waste management record.

The urgent need to keep training courses for scaffolders and plant operators lay behind the Construction Industry Training Board’s surprise decision this week to hold on to its colleges.

Nearly 50 years after their original sentencing, the Shrewsbury Pickets have finally had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Readie Construction has become the largest employee owned construction contractor in the UK with the owners selling up to an employee ownership trust.

The Construction Industry Training Board has scrapped its plans to sell its colleges and quit training.

The government is planning to expand its skills bootcamp programme and has stumped up an extra half a million pounds to expand two of the construction centres.

MPs are warning the government that is has vastly underestimated the task involved in getting the UK’s existing housing stock to be adequately energy efficient.

Energy company Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy Ltd has been fined more than half a million pounds after an agency worker fell six feet from a platform.

Balfour Beatty’s statutory gender pay gap report shows a narrowing in the difference between the average pay of male and female employees across all roles.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many things, including young people’s aspirations.

The Construction Leadership Council is claiming widespread industry support for its proposed national retrofit strategy.

Retrofitting and refurbishing buildings to the extent necessary to meet government energy efficiency targets requires an additional 350,000 skilled construction workers in Britain by 2028.

The Construction Leadership Council is working to get rid of self-employed construction workers from public sector projects by 2024.

There has been a significant rise in the number of workers furloughed in the construction sector this year, with 244,100 people on furlough at the end of January 2021.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has set a budget that he hopes will promote an investment-led recovery for the UK as the country emerges from lockdown.

Latest company in the construction sector to move to employee ownership is London utilities contractor Falco Construction Limited.