A quick look at the major contracts in Leeds that are going to be affected by the collapse of Carillion.
New dual carriageway
It was made public just before Christmas that Carillion had won the contract to carry out the first phase of work on the £80m road scheme that’s been dubbed the East Leeds Orbital Road (ELOR).
Leeds City Council will now need to find a new contractor, which will inevitably mean further delay to the project. Rival shortlisted bidder Balfour Beatty could be appointed in Carillion’s place, should they still want the work. If it has to go back out to tender, expect the delay to be much longer.
Questions are bound to be asked, however, about why the council’s Director of City Development Martin Farrington was on 20th December appointing as contractor a company whose financial future was known to be desperately insecure.
Tower Works
Carillion was appointed by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) to be its development partner at the £70m Tower Works development on the south bank of the River Aire back in 2015, with work due to start two years ago.
Since the announcement, it’s been nothing but delays, the latest of which (in spring last year) involved modifications to the original plans, specifying that to make the scheme viable, the new homes in the scheme would now be for rent, rather than for sale.
So, the HCA is going to have to find a new partner and put in a fresh planning application. If I were a betting man my money would be on one of Leeds’s two current development sweethearts, L&G (who are funding a build-to-rent scheme at nearby Mustard Wharf) or CEG (who have major plans underway further south, in and around Temple Works).
Cycle Superhighway
Carillion were appointed in October last year to build the latest £4m phase of the “cycle superhighway” project linking Bradford and Leeds.
A new contractor will now need to be found to complete this latest phase of the works being carried out in Leeds city centre.
Schools
Back in 2005 Carillion were awarded a £42m PFI project by the council to finance, design, build and maintain two secondary schools and five primaries in Leeds. While it’s not clear (to me at least) whether the company is still managing the facilities at all seven, at one of the secondaries, Roundhay High School, a note to parents/carers sent out by the headteacher today said the school was currently unaffected by the company’s collapse.
It said:
We have been in discussions during the course of this morning and can assure you that the day-to-day running of all our school contracts (cleaning, catering, etc) will continue as normal due to the contingency plans in place. The normal running of the school is therefore unaffected.
General
Over the past year the council has made payments of over £5m to Carillion’s civil engineering arm.
Indeed many questions need to be asked about why the director of city development does things from NGT to ELOR to really dodgy site allocations it does make us wonder why this man is still in post!
Too much reliance on a few names, and their individual business models, is a risky business, both in long-term development sustainability and in terms of cultural and community vision. Increasing this trend on the already broadly monopolistic Leeds South Bank project is… well, fill in the blanks, Quentin.
I thought I heard that mr Corbin was against Pfi
Obviously leeds council didn’t listen labour say one thing then do it