Construction firm wins contracts worth £7.5m

Posted by on 27 May 2021

A family-run Rochdale construction company has secured three social housing contracts worth a total of £7.5m.
PLP Construction was founded in 1982 by managing director Philip Bradley and employs 40 people, including his son Laurie Bradley and daughter Joanne James, who are both directors.
The company specialise in education, commercial and housing and have seen an increase in demand for its social housing expertise.
It is working with The Guinness Partnership to build 15 houses in James Butterworth Street, Rochdale, and another eight houses and 16 apartments in Dob Brook Close, Newton Heath, Manchester.

The third social housing project is with the Johnnie Johnson Housing Trust to build a mixture of bungalows and cottage apartments in Doncaster.  All three projects are expected to take 12 months to complete.

Joanne James said: “We’re delighted to secure the work. The social housing sector is buoyant at the moment and it builds on our existing relationships with both The Guinness Partnership and Johnnie Johnson Housing Trust.

“We’re also at pre-construction stage with Rochdale Boroughwide Housing on a local housing project and two supported living housing projects for Great Places Housing Group, which will be starting on site in the autumn.”

Social housing work normally accounts for around 60 per cent of PLP Construction’s turnover but Joanne said the company continued to work across other sectors.

“The school industry is important to us and we’re currently building extensions for St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School and Harwood Park Primary School, in Heywood,” she said;

“We’re also involved in a project to build eight luxury houses in Whalley. The social housing market is very important to us but we’re very conscious that we are involved in schools, private housebuilding and commercial work as well.

“It’s always nice when we’re able to do work in Rochdale as most of our staff live in the area and we employ a number of apprentices. It’s an exciting time for the business as we approach our 40th anniversary in 2022.”

Joanne said PLP Construction had been doing a lot of work behind the scenes including entering into a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Salford and being accepted into Innovate UK’s EDGE Scale-up Programme for growing SMEs.

“It’s really important that we’re always looking to improve our processes and procedures and the KTP will enable us to do that,” she said.

“It’s a real honour to be asked by Innovate UK to join the scale-up programme and hopefully it will enable us to futureproof our business for many more years to come.”