Costain plays down impact of planned M6 link road hitting the buffers

Costain has said a road job it was working on which was due to link the M6 with south Lancaster will not affect the firm’s future workloads despite it being pulled.

The firm has seen several highways jobs bite the dust in recent weeks including work to upgrade the central reservation on the trans-Pennine M62 because of costs while it was dropped from a roster of firms lined up to carry out improvement work on the A66 in northern England leaving Balfour Beatty, Kier and Keltbray in the mix.

The latest setback has seen a road connecting a proposed garden village in south Lancaster with junction 33 of the motorway put on ice because of costs.

Costain said it had been acting as a consultant on the job for Lancashire County Council and added: “We have been advising Lancashire County Council on their scheme in the face of funding and global inflationary pressures. We were contracted to work on a consultancy basis and so the council’s decision to suspend the scheme will have no material impact on Costain or our future order book.”

The job is understood to have not been in the firm’s order book which it said in March was £2.8bn while no contractor had yet been appointed for the project.