Contract award

Blackpool lets a 200 million pound highways framework to seven firms

By Staff Writer  |  02-09-2026

Blackpool Borough Council has awarded a two lot highways framework with a combined value of 200,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax. Seven contractors hold eight places between them. The award notice was published at 10:29 on 2 September 2026 and both lots run from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2030.

Lot 1, highways surfacing works, carries 120,000,000 pounds net and 144,000,000 pounds gross. Lot 2, highways civil engineering work, carries 80,000,000 pounds net and 96,000,000 pounds gross. Each gross figure is exactly 1.2 times its net, so the notice carries value added tax at 20 per cent and nothing else. Both lots are recorded as works, both as above threshold, and both were awarded on 2 September 2026 by open procedure under a framework agreement.

Four years on both lots, from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2030. The notice records no extension option.

Who takes what

Lot 1 goes to Associated Asphalt Contracting Ltd, Multipave (NW) Limited, DSD Construction Limited and J. Hopkins (Contractors) Limited. Lot 2 goes to Associated Asphalt Contracting Ltd, George Cox and Sons Limited, P. Casey (Land Reclamation) Limited and A E Yates Limited. Associated Asphalt is the only firm on both, so seven firms hold eight places. Six of the seven are recorded on the notice as small or medium sized enterprises and one as large. Their addresses run across the north west and beyond it: London, Leyland, Carlisle, Manchester, Farnworth, Rochdale and Lostock in Bolton.

Twenty seven firms are named as tenderers, so twenty took no place. The council had set out to appoint up to four suppliers on each lot and it appointed four on each.

Who else may use it

The framework is not Blackpool's alone. It is also available to Lancashire County Council, Blackburn with Darwen Council, the Lancashire Combined County Authority, and to all current and future members and associate members of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. The notice names the members as Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan councils, and the associate members as Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Cheshire East and Warrington, together with the Greater Manchester transport, fire and rescue, police and waste disposal bodies.

Blackburn with Darwen awarded its own four lot surfacing and civils framework the previous day and is named here as a permitted user of Blackpool's. Multipave (NW) and DSD Construction hold places on both. A contractor on one of these arrangements can therefore find itself competing against its own framework partners for work in the same borough.

How work will be ordered, and what to read into it

The council publishes an indicative range for call off contracts of 100,000 to 5,000,000 pounds on Lot 1 and 100,000 to 1,500,000 pounds on Lot 2. The mechanism is set out in the published framework information rather than on the notice. A selection procedure decides which supplier or suppliers are instructed to quote for a work order, and a quotation procedure then obtains the price, either without secondary competition, where a single supplier is instructed, or with it, where more than one is. The documents that govern that choice are not published with the notice.

The 1,500,000 pound ceiling on the civils lot is the figure to note. Earthworks, drainage renewal, retaining walls, small bridges and full depth carriageway reconstruction all sit in that lot, and larger schemes of that kind will fall outside the indicative range and be procured some other way. Where a work order crosses both lots, which rates and which terms govern is decided by the framework documents rather than by anything visible on the notice.

Nothing is signed yet. Assessment summaries were sent on 2 September 2026 and the notice records a future signature date of 25 September 2026 for Lot 1 and 30 September 2026 for Lot 2. No award criteria weightings, no scores and no runner up are published, so nothing can be said here about how close the competition was.