Legal

An MP has written to the new policing minister about the “insulting” delay in concluding the investigation into the Didcot Power Station collapse. Labour’s representative for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, asked Diana Johnson to clarify when the probe would be concluded, and to comment on the impact of the delay on…

A High Court judge has thrown out a legal challenge against a £250m road scheme in Derby. The Bam consortium road upgrade had been put on hold after a local campaign group, Stop the A38 Expansion, launched a challenge last year against the government’s decision to give it the go-ahead.…

An East Grinstead contractor has successfully overturned a legal decision that found it was wrong to terminate its contract with a housing association over repeated late payments. The dispute arose from a JCT contract between Providence Building Services Limited and Hexagon Housing Association Limited (Hexagon) for the construction of buildings…

The owner of a Bedfordshire construction firm has been banned from being a company director until 2037 for fraudulently claiming Covid loans. Nick Addison, a 50-year old director of Addison’s Quality Ltd, overstated his firm’s turnover by more than three times to claim £50,000, according to an investigation by the…

Contractor TClarke must pay more than £2m to a subcontractor after a High Court judge backed an adjudicator’s decision over a substantial data-centre job in London. The High Court deputy judge in the case, Jonathan Acton Davis KC, found that TClarke had issued an “invalid” pay-less notice regarding Bell Building…

Two builders have been given suspended jail sentences after admitting making fraudulent claims for business-support loans during the Covid pandemic. The father and son admitted fraud by false representation, contrary to section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006 related to claims made to the Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS). The…

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…