Contract award
Cadent Gas takes 45.9 million pound Lower Thames Crossing diversion
By Staff Writer | 26 August 2026
National Highways Limited has placed the diversion of two high pressure gas mains for the Lower Thames Crossing directly with Cadent Gas Limited at 45,954,392 pounds excluding value added tax and 55,145,270.40 pounds including it. The award notice was published on 26 August 2026 at 11:14am under the identifier 081158-2026 and a contract details notice followed the same morning at 11:37am under 081182-2026.
The contract is titled a reimbursement and implementation deed. Its scope is recorded on the notice as the diversion of Cadent Gas's HP6 and HP8 gas mains, together with associated assurance works, for the Lower Thames Crossing road development. The single agreed metric on the contract details notice is titled diversion, protection and assurance works.
This was a direct award. The procurement method is recorded as direct, the details as direct award, and the rationale given on the notice is that these works could only be executed by Cadent Gas. The notice classifies that reason as a single supplier technical ground. The legal basis stated is the Procurement Act 2023.
What the two notices say and where they differ
Two notices were published within twenty three minutes of each other. The first, 081158-2026, is a contract award notice recording the award as active with an award date of 26 August 2026 and a scheduled future signature date of 7 September 2026. The second, 081182-2026, is a contract details notice recording the contract as active and signed on 26 August 2026.
Those two dates are not the same, and the record does not reconcile them. A reader pricing anything off this notice pair should take the values and the contract period, which are identical on both, and treat the signature date as a matter the record leaves open. The contract period runs from 7 September 2026 to 31 March 2031, four and a half years, and the procurement is recorded as above threshold.
The gross figure is value added tax and nothing else
The two published figures differ by exactly twenty per cent. 45,954,392 pounds multiplied by 1.2 gives 55,145,270.40 pounds, which is the gross figure to the penny. There is no optimism allowance, contingency or extension value bridging the two numbers, so the net figure is the one to carry into any comparison with other packages on the scheme.
What the notice does not publish is any breakdown between the physical diversion of the two mains and the assurance works that sit alongside it. The classification used is construction work for tunnels, shafts and subways, which locates the work in the ground rather than at surface level, but the notice does not describe the method, the lengths involved or the periods during which either main is out of service.
Where this sits in the scheme
National Highways records the Lower Thames Crossing as its most ambitious scheme in thirty five years and states that construction work begins in 2026, with opening to traffic in the early 2030s. Its tunnels are described by the authority as sixteen metres wide, some of the largest bored tunnels in the world and the longest road tunnels in the United Kingdom.
The main delivery contracts are already placed. National Highways names Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd as delivery partner for the roads north of the Thames, a Bouygues Travaux Publics and Murphy joint venture for the tunnels and approaches contract, and Skanska Construction UK Limited as preferred bidder for the Kent roads. Turner and Townsend Limited holds the commercial partner contract and Jacobs the integration partner contract.
A utility diversion of this size, placed direct on the undertaker and running four and a half years, is enabling work with a programme position rather than a standalone job. The interface that matters is not the price. It is what happens to the road works north of the river if the mains are not clear of the alignment when the civils contractor needs the ground, and neither notice says who carries that risk or how the two programmes are tied together.