As market turbulence continued to hit the sector Construction News readers flocked to stories about administrations, legal action and supply chain issues this year. Here are the top 10 most read:
9. Midlands plant firm collapses after 36 years
Derbyshire-based plant hire business Leedale called in administrators in August.
The company had been founded in 1989 by Lee Walkup and continued to operate as a family business leasing diggers, tip trucks, grab trucks, cranes, crushers and road sweepers.
Four months earlier it had been ordered by a tribunal to pay former director Abigail Bullock £8,724 over a failure to pay her notice money.
7. Contractor loses cracked concrete court claim
Cambridgeshire-based MJS Projects (March) Ltd took designers RPS Consulting Services Ltd to the Technology and Construction Court for alleged negligence and breach of contract.
It alleged that concrete surrounding drains in the design of a container park near Felixstowe Port was suffering from deterioration and damage four months after completion.
The case focused on whether the deterioration and damage was caused by RPS’s design, the manner in which the drains were constructed, or both.
A judge dismissed the claim in April.
6. Balfour Beatty removes Danny Sullivan from contracts
Danny Sullivan Group denied deliberate wrongdoing after Balfour Beatty terminated all its agreements with the labour supply firm in July over the misclassification of HS2 workers’ employment status.
The contractor said that an independent investigation found that the labour supplier had misinformed it “about the provision of Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) workers instead of PAYE employees, in breach of their agreements”.
Danny Sullivan Group said the review it commissioned found no “evidence of deliberate wrongdoing involving any employees of our business”.
It said it was putting “significant” investment into “enhancements and transformation of the company’s processes, technology and culture”.
5. Major independent timber supplier on brink of collapse
News that National Timber Group England and its holding parent, National Timber Group Midco had both filed a notice of intention to go into administration was widely read in November.
The Sheffield-registered company employed more than 1,000 people and operated under brands including Arnold Laver, National Timber Systems, SV Timber and NORclad.
It went into administration later that month, when insolvency specialists Alvarez & Marsal said they were hopeful of finding a buyer for the business.
3. £45m Yorkshire bypass contract awarded
Plan of Howden relief road
The announcement that Sheffield-based contractor Aureos had been awarded a £45m construction contract for a major relief road on the northern edge of Howden by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council saw readers flock to CN in June.
The project will deliver a new link road between the A614 Thorpe Road and Station Road (B1228), including four new roundabouts on land currently used for farming.
Works were due to begin in early July and were scheduled to take two years.
2. Six contractors fined more than £400,000 in crackdown on illegal workers
The second most popular story of 2025 saw CN name the contractors that had been fined in the first quarter of the year for employing people with no right to work in the UK.
One of the largest fines, £120,000, was issued to Salford-based R&F Reinforcement and Construction.
The Home Office said it had encountered illegal workers employed by R&F at work on a John Sisk site. Sisk told CN that the subcontractor had since been removed from all of its projects.
1. Millions paid to Henry family before collapse, administrators claim
The most read news story on CN in 2025 saw the revelation that administrators for Henry Construction Projects had lodged proceedings at the High Court against both of its former directors, Mark Henry and John Noone, along with five of Henry’s family members, in a bid to recoup £24.9m.
The contractor’s joint administrators alleged millions of pounds was paid out to directors’ family members before the company went into administration in 2023.
Three months later, CN reported that the former directors filed a defence stating that the payments were part of legitimate intercompany arrangements rather than a last-minute cash grab, and refuted all allegations of wrongdoing.
