Balfour Beatty has beaten M Group and Ringway to a highways maintenance deal for three local authorities in the Midlands that could be worth up to £900m.
The contract between Balfour Beatty Living Places and Coventry City Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council and Warwickshire County Council is on a standstill period until January 19 but should be signed by next month.
The deal is the renewal of a contract, known as Highways Maintenance Contract 2016 (HMC16), that Balfour Beatty first signed with the trio of authorities back in 2016, which ran for an initial seven years and was valued at £245m. This contract was then extended for a further three years.
The new contract will start on May 5 2026 and run until May 2033, with the option for an extension of up to a further six years, which would take the deal up to 2039.
Balfour Beatty will continue responsibility for more 5,000km of roads, winter maintenance across a network of 2,000km of roads and cyclical maintenance of over 55,000 streetlights.
In 2024, Solihull was spending around £6m a year through the current contract according to council minutes with the other two authorities contributing a total of £33m, but not all the council's highways maintenance work will be delivered through the new deal.
Coventry City Council has a highways maintenance budget of £11.8m in the current year with £3.5m delivered through HMC16 and the balance delivered by the council's direct labour organisation.
Before Christmas, Mark Adams, the council's acting director of city services, told a cabinet meeting: 'This is a supplementary service for specialist areas like resurfacing and some structural works. If we choose to use the service we can do, but we don't have to if we don't need to as we have our own DLO.'
