George Cox & Sons primed for £2m Blackburn civils job
The local authority’s cabinet will this week be asked to sign off the contractor’s appointment to deliver a four-arm roundabout on the New Whalley Old Road, opening up access for a projected 1,000+ homes.
Blackburn with Darwen Council’s executive board meets on Thursday 9 April with a recommendation to rubber-stamp the appointment of the preferred contractor and the allocation of funds to allow the project to proceed.
BwD had tendered for a civil engineering contractor to deliver the roundabout at Sunny Bower.
The roundabout will provide an entrance to both a Bovis Homes housing development, which is currently on site off Whalley Old Road, and the proposed North East Blackburn Strategic Housing Site (SHS), a long-term 1,250-home residential masterplan site in multiple ownership.
There are seven stakeholders involved here, including the council itself which is the lead land promoter and largest landowner, controlling around 45% of the 247 acres.
Thursday’s meeting will also be asked to sign off the acquisition of the grade two-listed Eddy Holes farmhouse building within the SHS, to safeguard the scheme’s progress. The advertised sale price of £995,000 has been agreed as fair by an independent valuer.
Along with complementary uses and associated infrastructure, development of the SHS will be delivered over multiple phases, starting from 2030 and taking around 20 years to complete.
BwD’s executive will be asked to sign off the overall budget of £2m to cover construction, fees, surveys and contingency. This will include £201,000 costs incurred to date.
The council has £1.5m allocated funding within its capital programme, with an additional £119,200 of funding approved by executive board in February, which has come from Bovis Homes by way of a Section 106 Agreement.
Vistry brand Bovis Homes secured its consent in November 2022. The scheme will include 165 homes, 33 of them affordable.
According to the meeting report, Bovis Homes’ funding is equivalent to the cost of entrance works, omitted from the firm’s scheme initially so that it could be brought forward in combination with the larger project’s work.
The executive board will be asked to approve the addition of a further £130,800 to the capital budget funded by S106 contributions, and approves the reallocation of £250,000 capital funding from the North East Blackburn capital budget, which has in excess of £550,000 of funds available as of March.
February’s meeting had approved a capital allocation of £1m in total across the financial years 2024/25, 2025/26 and 2026/27 to bring forward the North East Blackburn SHS to cover pre-development work including masterplanning, surveys, site investigations and any other design or site enabling infrastructure.
Stantec is BwD’s advisor on the SHS scheme.
Bolton-based George Cox & Sons has this year also landed further work with Fylde Council, securing a pair of jobs worth a combined £3.1m in St Annes, while last autumn it won a £5.7m package of schemes with Bury Council.
