Weekly round-up - 9 November 2015

Workers agree 6% pay deal, HS2’s pear tree challenge, Thames Tideway Tunnel’s £13bn of environmental benefits, and Drigg nuclear waste depository plans three new vaults.

Jackie Whitelaw
09 November 2015

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1. Workers in the engineering and construction industries belonging to the GMB and Unite unions have accepted a three year pay deal of 6% over three years. The unions say the deal will bring financial stability to the industry and should help to attract investment in much needed infrastructure projects in the UK.

2. HS2 has hit a novel challenge with the news an ancient pear tree due to be chopped down to make way for the railway has been voted the best tree in England. The Cubbington pear tree is believed to have been growing near the Warwickshire village for more than 250 years. The Woodland Trust, which ran the Tree of the Year poll, has called for it to be preserved due to its age. HS2 officials say the tree's hollow trunk means it will have to be felled, with seedlings planted nearby.

    

3. Thames Tideway Tunnel is set to bring environmental benefits worth up to almost £13bn, Environment Minister Rory Stewart has claimed. New figures show the benefits of the tunnel, he said, which include preventing millions of tonnes of sewage flowing into the river every year, improving water quality to better protect marine wildlife and creating a cleaner river for all to enjoy.

4. British Land has appointed former Argent chief executive and mastermind of the King’s Cross development Roger Madelin to lead on its 46-acre Canada Water site in London. Madelin who sits on British Land’s executive committee will join the developer in February.

5. A joint venture of Mace and CPC Project Services is to provide programme support to London Underground on the upgrade of the District, Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City Lines. The Four Lines Modernisation (4LM) programme will renew the current signalling systems and bring in advanced automated train control across 40% of the underground network.

6. New corporate manslaughter sentencing guidelines introduced last week make it possible for firms with £50M plus turnovers to be fined £20M with the possibility of even bigger fines for much larger companies. Businesses with a turnover of between £10M and £50M could face fines of up to £7.5M, firms with a turnover of between £2m and £10M would see a maximum fine of £2.8M while firms with a turnover of less than £2M could be hit with fines of £800,000.

7. Drigg Low Level Waste Repository has submitted a far-reaching planning application which, if successful, will ensure the future of its site until 2050. The submission of the application follows news that LLWR has been granted a revised permit to allow continued disposal of wastes at the site – the culmination of 7 years’ work by the organisation. The planning application is seeking to enable the phased construction of 3 new vaults where low level waste would be disposed of in specially-grouted containers. If successful, construction work on the first of the new vaults, expected to take four years, could start in 2016.

8. A planning framework to deliver more than 25,500 new homes at Old Oak and Park Royal in West London has been approved by Mayor Boris Johnson.The Mayor believes the site could create tens of thousands of new homes and provide almost 14% of Greater London’s employment needs up to 2031, with early estimates of a £7bn annual contribution to the UK economy.

9. The Environment Agency has been using Manchester Fire and Rescue Service's Aerial Imagery Reconnaissance unit to view waste sites from the air. The drones can take pictures and video and also detect elevated heat sources within the waste piles which could be in danger of self-igniting.

10. A total of 97% of England’s bathing waters passed the minimum tougher standard this year. In total, 63.6% of bathing waters meet the new Excellent standard.