Weekly round-up 27 August 2014

Brownfield development bonanza, tidal energy progress, mergers update and MPs back no vote on Scottish independence - your weekly round up.

Antony Oliver
27 August 2014

Twitter FacebookLinkedIn

Print

1. Plans by Government to build new homes on brownfield sites will mean increased use of soil stabilisation to treat land in situ, according to Britpave. Planning and housing minister Brandon Lewis has announced the bidding criteria councils to share a £200M fund to create 10 housing zones on brownfield land. The new zones, all of which will be outside of London must support the building of 750 to 2,000 homes. A separate bidding process for £400M for 20 housing zones in London is already underway.

2. Hundreds of council homes are to be built in Waltham Forest over the next three years in the biggest public housing project in a quarter of a century. A £16.7M project funded by a mixture of grants and loans will lead to the development of 435 homes across the borough.

3. The construction of a 398MW tidal energy project in the Pentland Firth is set to begin later this year.Atlantis Resource's MeyGen scheme planned for the Firth's Inner Sound has secured £50m in funding.Atlantis said the completed scheme would have up to 269 turbines submerged on the seabed producing enough energy for 175,000 homes.

4. The board of Hyder has agreed terms to sell the business to consultant ARCADIS after the Dutch firm increased its cash offer to buy the firm. ARCADIS' revised offer of 730p per share was made on 21 August and easily trumped Nippon Koei’s previous 680p per share bid to buy the consultant by 50p valuing the firm at around £288M. The original bid by ARCADIS for the Hyder business was 650p per share. Nippon Koei is still considering its position.

5. Costain has reported half year turnover of £529.1M, up from £462.9M for the same period last year. Pretax profit was up 8% to £9.1M up from £8.4M, also for the half year. For comparison, Costain’s 2013 full year figures were £960M turnover and £31M pretax profit. The firm says it has a record order book of £3.2bn helped by new wins including appointment to Network Rail’s £2bn electrification programme and to three transmission frameworks for National Grid. 

6. New research from University of Southampton says that Britain’s increased flooding events have been caused by increased building in vulnerable areas. They conclude that when population growth and building growth are taken into account there is no rise in the number of reported major floods events over the past 129 years. The study was published in Hydrological Sciences journal. Meanswhile, the Environment Agency said it had dredged 4km (8km of riverbank) of the Parrett and Tone in the Somerset levels, removing approximately 80,000 tonnes of silt and remains on programme to complete post winter flood work by the end of October.

7. A new survey by Parliamentary information service Dods shows that 94% of all MPs think Scotland will remain part of the United Kingdom. The poll questioned 100 MPs ahead of the Scottish independence referendum, which is due to take place on 18 September. The findings support those of another recent poll by Ipsos Mori which also found that 95% of parliamentarians believed that the Scottish people would vote against independence.   

8. More than 1,400 properties between Camber and Lydd will benefit from a £30M scheme as work begins on the Broomhill Sands Coastal Defence Scheme in Kent. Team Van Oord is building a new1.7km rock revetment and tidal wave wall, increasing the amount of shingle along 700m of the beach, putting in eight new 54m groynes to stabilise the beach.  The works are scheduled for completion in December 2015 and will improve the flood protection to more than 1,300 homes and 100 businesses by increasing the standard of protection to the area from 1 in 20 years to 1 in 200 years. 

9. Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and Greg Clark, Minister for Cities have signed the finalised £1.2bn Glasgow and Clyde Valley City Deal with local council leaders and the Scottish government. The deal involves up to 20 infrastructure schemes across the city-region. These include improvements to the M8, a new bridge and “some form of” rail link to Glasgow airport.

10. The CBI’s latest survey of business and professional services firms showed a healthier picture of activity in the sector with 44% reporting growth in numbers employed and the same number saying that said they were more optimistic about future work prospects than three months ago. Business volumes, it said, expanded for a fifth consecutive quarter. www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2014/08/growth-slows-in-servi...