National Highways’ top contractors revealed

The company that maintains and upgrades the M25 was the largest single supplier to National Highways in 2024-25, Construction News can reveal.

It is the first time in four years that Costain has not been the client’s top supplier.

Private finance initiative (PFI) company Connect Plus received £487m during the period, according to a Freedom of Information query on the amount of money spent by National Highways on construction contractors.

Connect Plus is owned by a consortium of investors including Balfour Beatty, which has a 15 per cent stake. It has been undertaking a major upgrade of the London orbital motorway, which saw the road closed in Surrey for the first time.

The firm’s haul was up from £447.9m in the previous financial year, and was £95m higher than in 2022-23.

Balfour Beatty itself received the second-largest total of payments from National Highways, at £414m. This marked a rise of £22m on 2023-24, when it was the client’s third-largest supplier.

During the year it, received a boost when campaign group CPRE dropped its legal challenge to the A57 Link Roads project, which will create two highways near the village of Mottram, Greater Manchester.

Connect M1-A1, another PFI company part-owned by Balfour Beatty, was 15th on the list. It received £78m.

Two other PFI firms – Autolink Concessionaires (A19) and UK Highways M40 – also made the table, in 11th and 18th respectively.

Kier received the third-biggest haul, totalling £357m, which was about £90m more than in the previous financial year.

Its work in 2024-25 included designs for the refurbishment of eight bridges at the M6 Lune Gorge in Cumbria, where preparatory work is due to start imminently.

Costain had been the government-owned client’s biggest construction supplier each year since it first topped the table in 2021-22. In 2020-21, while the company did not rank in first place, its combined total including joint ventures was higher than any other contractor.

In the last financial year, Balfour Beatty and Kier, alongside Keltbray, continued to work on the £1.3bn A66 Northern Trans-Pennine dualling project, having been appointed in late 2022.

Costain was initially part of the project but had left the job by June 2023 for undisclosed reasons.

Its planned work on the A1 from Morpeth to Ellingham was scrapped in November after being cited by the Treasury as one of five “unaffordable” projects. Costain was awarded the contract in the summer of 2021 but the scheme did not receive a development consent order until May 2024.

The Department for Transport delayed the client’s next major five-year spending period, RIS3, as the government undertook its spending review, with an interim £4.8bn one-year financial settlement introduced for 2024-25 instead.

In July, the Office of Rail and Road said National Highways failed to deliver 11 “enhancement commitments”, which included “supply chain management and asset data issues”, across 2020 to 2025.