Bramall beats Wates on £100m Yorkshire housing scheme

A frontrunner is finally emerging for a massively delayed £100m PFI social housing deal in West Yorkshire.

Insiders say Kirklees Council is inclining towards a joint venture between regional contractor Bramall Construction in joint venture with registered social landlord South Yorkshire Housing Association.

This means the door has shut on a rival pitch from Regenter Excellent Homes for Life, a group comprising Wates/Pinnacle Group/Regenter.

A third group, Yorkshire Housing Group (Lovell/Bank of Scotland) was dropped last year. Lovell became the group's replacement contractor in 2006 when Laing O'Rourke pulled out.

The scheme originally came up for grabs almost three years ago. A series of best and final offer deadlines then came and went, with the latest one promising a preferred contractor six months ago.

A source told CJ: "This is a very complex project and suffers from a bad combination of problems.

"The job involves building houses for both general and specific needs, requiring different specifications. And instead of being on one site, the homes will be spread across 30 different ones. In some cases, it's been a challenge to get possession of these sites."

The project, Excellent Homes for Life, involves 550 homes featuring a raft of environmentally friendly measures and is expected to take between three to four years to build.

This will be followed by a 25-year period of facilities management undertaken by Kier.