Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:43:34 GMT A man is charged with murdering a clergyman at his South Gloucestershire vicarage and a retired teacher in Worcestershire.
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:51:09 GMT A Harrogate teacher who felt under pressure to get good exam results set himself on fire in the school car park, an inquest hears.
Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:47:27 GMT Two of Baby Peter's social workers committed a "serious error of judgement" during an incident which saw him "disappear" for 12 days, a tribunal hears.
Galliford Try profits soared in the first half of the year as its housing expansion into the south east paid off with margins hitting 11%.
The housing and construction giant also held its contracting performance in a “competitive market” with profits flat at £10.9m.
Overall group revenues jumped by nearly a third to £747m, with housing helping to nearly double pre-tax profits, up from £17m to £32m.
Housing completions at its Linden Homes business jumped 60% to a record 1,352 putting the firm on course to be a top five house builder.
Greg Fitzgerald, chief executive, said: “The Group is confident that it is on track to deliver all the objectives of its three year house building expansion plan during the current financial year with our southern biased business performing strongly despite the general economic uncertainty.
“The housing market has remained resilient and we are encouraged by the continued strength of the market during the first seven weeks of 2012.”
He added: “The spread of long term work in the group’s construction business is underpinning its strength in difficult market conditions.
“Following our rapid expansion in house building, the group will continue its disciplined focus on the regions and market segments where we have proven expertise and experience, concentrated on the south of England.”
He said: “This approach is expected to deliver revenue and profit growth and support an enhanced dividend and a progressive dividend policy going forward.”
Galliford Try said the affordable housing contracting sector was developing slowly as clients adapted to new market rental funding models. Its Partnerships business remained flat making a 1.1m profit on sales of £51m.
Divisional results
Housebuilding Revenue: £277.0m (£152.9m) Profit from operations: £35.0m (£9.9m) Operating profit margin 11.0%* (6.5%) * excluding significant land sale
Construction Revenue: £499.9m (£442.6m) Profit from operations: £10.9m (£10.9m) Operating profit margin 2.2% (2.5%)
On the contracting side, infrastructure took over as the main contributor to construction profits with its performance up from £4.7m last time to £5.2m, while building dropped to £4.6m from £5.1m.
Galliford Try said it expected margins to edge down in the full year as jobs won against increasingly fierce bidding competition eroded returns.
The construction order book was in line with expectations at £1.6 bn (H1 2011: £1.75bn). Some 42% was won in the regulated sector, 44% in the public sector and 14% in the private sector.
The division has secured full projected revenue for the current financial year and 67% for the next financial year.
Britain’s largest volume house builder has bounced back into the black with a pre-tax profit of £26m in the first half of the year.
Barratt also said it has seen a strong start to 2012 with sales up 22% in the first seven weeks of the year.
But the builder is still maintaining a cautious policy towards opening new sites with 400 on the go at present.
Using its current management capacity this has the potential to rise to 460, but only if market demand supported it.
House building completions for the first half edged up just 6% to 5,117 with private completions of 4,028 (2010: 3,669) and social housing completions of 1,089 (2010: 1,127). Average selling prices were up 3.1%.
As a result revenue in the first half grew by just 9% to £953m, but operating profits jumped 40% to £61m with margins creeping up to 6.4%.
The growth came largely from the South East of England, where the majority of its 382 sites are based.
Group chief executive Mark Clare said the company’s performance had continued to improve despite the wider economic uncertainty.
“We have delivered a further substantial increase in profits and recently-acquired high margin land is now driving further recovery,” he said.
“We have again brought debt and land creditors in below expected levels.
“We have seen a strong start to 2012 and over the first seven weeks private reservations are running 21.8% ahead of this time last year.”
The Competition Commission has provisionally ruled that the proposed merger of Anglo American and Lafarge operations in the UK could restrict competition in construction materials.
Anglo American and Lafarge want to establish a joint venture materials company from Tarmac and Lafarge aggregate and cement operations.
The deal is hoped to deliver £60m in operational savings and create a new business with sales of around £1.8bn.
But the commission’s provisional findings are that the merger could lead to a substantial lessening of competition.
It raised concerns about the supply of bulk cement and rail ballast nationally. There are also worries about the supply of primary aggregates for construction applications in 23 local markets and asphalt in two local markets and readymix in seven areas.
The Commission said that it would publish a series of recommendations that could address its concerns shortly.
Chairman of the Anglo/Lafarge Inquiry Group, Roger Witcomb, said: “We have a number of concerns about this joint venture.
“In bulk cement there are currently only four UK producers, and there is evidence that the market is not as competitive as it could be.
“Prices and profit margins haven’t been affected in the way we would have expected following the big falls in the demand for cement in the past few years.
“We have not reached a view on whether or not there has been coordination in the bulk cement market. But we are concerned that the proposed tie-up would increase the susceptibility of this market to coordination.
He said: “Some of the reasons for this arise from the proposed combination of the cement businesses and some from the increased vertical integration that would result from the combination of their readymix businesses.”
Lafarge currently has a relatively small readymix business, while Tarmac has a relatively large one.
“This is a particularly complex investigation because of the number of different products, the varying degrees of substitutability between them, and the fact that cement is an input into readymix and aggregates are an input into both readymix and asphalt.
“In addition, for aggregates used in general construction applications markets are quite localised as a result of high transport costs compared with product value,” he added.
“We have therefore had to examine competitive conditions in a large number of local markets for these products in coming to our view on the likely effect of the proposed joint venture on competition.
“We are now consulting on the possible actions we could take in response to the reductions in competition we have found.”
London's Barking and Dagenham Council has signed off an innovative deal to privately fund 477 new council homes at two sites in the town centre.
Working alongside contractor Laing O’Rourke’s Explore Investment arm and institutional asset developer Long Harbour, the council has secured £76m of funding for two big council housing projects.Each of the homes will be available to local people at affordable rents, ranging between 50 - 80% of local market rates in the Borough.
The scheme will be entirely self-financing from the rents paid over the term of the lease.
At the end of the lease period, all the properties in the William Street Quarter site and the Eastern End of the Thames View will automatically transfer into full council ownership.
Cllr. Phil Waker, cabinet member for Housing at Barking and Dagenham Council said: “This is a tremendously exciting and innovative scheme, which will deliver much needed new homes for the people of this borough.
“The Council Cabinet made a manifesto commitment at the last local election to deliver real and lasting investment in housing, despite the chill economic winds that have buffeted our area - and this announcement is another highly visible example of our determination to deliver on that promise.
"Not only will we see almost 500 new affordable homes built in prime sites which local people can and will be able to afford to rent, we are one of the very few local authorities that is currently building council housing under our own investment programme. We believe we have a strong record to be proud of.
“I want to pay tribute not only to our own council officers for working so hard on this deal, but also to our partners - Laing O’Rourke and Long Harbour, both of whom have shown real commitment to Barking and Dagenham and an innovative approach that has helped deliver what is the first totally privately funded affordable social housing scheme anywhere in the UK.”
The first dwellings will be available for take-up in about 18 months time, with the entire scheme expected to be completed within three years.
T-ZERO is a non-profit project initiated by some of the UK's leading
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