Stone Federation hosted a walking tour of Sheffield's impressive natural stone public space landscape architecture, with Sheffield City Council's Senior Landscape Architect, Mike Brearley, talking about the schemes, on Wednesday (10 May) .

The tour started in Sheaf Square at the front of Sheffield railway station, which was the first landscaping scheme Mike Brearley was involved in when he joined the Council 20 years ago, then as assistant to Richard Watts, who was the Senior Landscape Architect on the project.

A major part of the scheme was a water feature constructed in Johnsons Wellfield Quarries’ Crosland Hill sandstone, although the water was turned off in 2020 in response to the Covid pandemic. It has never been turned on again, not least because when it was turned off the council saved the cost of running the fountains and with energy prices soaring since then it has not wanted to incur the cost again.

The project was the first in Sheffield for which Steintec supplied the mortars. And as Steintec Technical Director Steven Burton explained over the lunch at the Leopold Hotel the company provided at the end of the tour, it marked a significant development in pavement construction. Notably, it did not have expansion joints.

It was used as evidence of the efficacy of the modular paving system that was incorporated into the evolving BS 7533 standard for the design of pavements constructed with natural stone or concrete.

As Steve Burton said: “At that time we had established the dynamics of natural stone in modular pavements and the causes of failures as well as the solutions, which include considerations of the correct choice of stone itself, where technical properties differ, as well as the technical properties and requirements of the mortar, the importance of detail in the design and the correct methods of installation.”

Sheaf Square helped transform the reputation of stone from being seen as a problem product for hard landscaping to being the materials of first choice.

Mike Brearley led the Stone Federation party on to other notable projects in Sheffield, including Barkers Pool in front of the City Hall, where the bullets of a World War II Messerschmitt have left their mark in the stone of the war memorial; Hallam Gardens; the Natural Stone Award-winning Tudor Square; the tranquil Peace Gardens; and the new Pound Park, with, as well as the Crosland Hill stone, lamp posts created by the landscape architect and artist Julian Stocks that celebrate Sheffield’s steel-making legacy based on Julian's memories of the city’s steel works as a child.

Johnsons Wellfield’s sandstone, quarried in Yorkshire, features heavily in the projects in Sheffield and Mike Brealey said: “If stone can come from a local source it has to come from that local source.”

That is not to say all of the stone in the schemes do come from local sources. There is also plenty of Chinese granite, including the majority of the paving in Sheaf Square. Much of the Chinese granite in Sheffield has been supplied by Hardscape. Other stones featured include Caithness paving from Scotland, Lazenby red sandstone from Cumbria, Kilkenny limestone from Ireland for street furniture and, from Yorkshire, Green Moor.

Sheffield also has some particularly good examples of sustainable drainage schemes (SuDS) that other areas should take note of, especially with Schedule 3 of The Flood & Water Management Act 2010 likely finally to be implemented in England next year to try to reduce the amount of raw sewage flooding into rivers and coastal waters (click here to read more about SuDS).

One area of Sheffield that was given an extensive stone upgrade only 25 years ago in a scheme with a design life of at least 60 years is now scheduled for a redesign to incorporate a SuDS system, although Mike Brearley says: “I do want to re-use the stone. It would be almost a crime if we didn’t.”

Mike has made his own contribution to sustainable drainage by designing and 3D printing a drain cover specifically for one of his schemes. It was made in steel for him by Sheffield company Steel Line. It is pictured below.

The tour by Mike Brierley was highly informative, and would have been of benefit to architects, planners and landscapers all over the country, as well as to the students of Sheffield’s Hallam University who had been scheduled to join the tour but were kept away by a test being sprung upon them at the last minute.

For those who couldn’t make it, the short video below gives you a taste of Sheffield’s stone landscaping that you missed.

The government has decided it is going to be easier to decide which of Britain’s EU-derived laws to scrap than to select those to retain.

The Retained EU Law (Revocation & Reform) Bill intended to revoke automatically some 4,000 laws that originated from membership of the EU at the end of this year. Some of the laws involve employment protection rights and health & safety regulations.

The Bill was introduced to Parliament in 2022 under the Premiership of Liz Truss. Although its aim was to scrap the EU-derived laws, it allowed for those that would still be needed to be retained.

When Richie Sunak was vying for the job of Prime Minister he said he would scrap the EU laws in the first 100 days of his premiership. He has changed his mind.

When the Bill was introduced by Liz Truss it was described as the culmination of a journey that began with the referendum in June 2016 and marked the two-year anniversary of ‘getting Brexit done’.

Retained EU Law is a category of domestic law created at the end of the transition period of leaving the EU (the end of 2021). It consists of EU-derived legislation that was preserved in the UK domestic legal framework by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

Successive Conservative administrations have maintained that the retained laws will be dropped, but Kemi Badenoch, who was appointed Secretary of State for the Department for Business & Trade in February this year, said in a written statement on Wednesday 10 May that there were “risks of legal uncertainty” if the majority of EU laws were repealed at the end of this year.

The task of identifying and, where necessary, amending those that were to be retained was unlikely to be completed by the end of this year. The Retained EU Law (Revocation & Reform) Bill has also received a cool reception from the House of Lords.

So instead of automatically scrapping all the laws except those that should be retained, the plan now is to identify about 600 that can be repealed or amended. It remains to be seen which 600 that will be.

Repealing or amending existing legislation can be achieved without the Retained EU Law (Revocation & Reform) Bill becoming law, but the changes would have to be agreed by Parliament.

Northamptonshire hard landscaping stone supplier Stone Plus UK has been placed into Administration. The Administrators, Jo Hammond and Gareth Rusling of Begbies Traynor in Sheffield, are looking for a buyer.

Stone Plus is in Mawsley, Kettering. It supplies a range of natural stone, porcelain and concrete landscaping products, and also has distribution rights for Oakdale Greenscaping and Irish McMonagle Stone for the south of England.

The administrators say the company experienced financial difficulties due to shipping problems and cashflow pressures that led to significant debts accruing, making the business unviable.

Stone Plus has three employees who are being made redundant.

Business advisor Eddisons has been appointed to sell the business and its assets.

Marshalls, which now includes the roofing Marley Group that it bought last year, has warned in a trading update for the four months to the end of April that group revenue contracted 14% on a like-for-like basis compared with last year.

Marshalls, headquartered in Elland, West Yorkshire, says the fall reflects the uncertain macroeconomic climate, a fall in new house building and continued weakness in private housing repair, maintenance and improvement (RMI).

Marshalls’ update says: “In the first quarter of the year, National House Building Council new housing starts were 27% lower than 2022, which had an impact on the performance of all the group’s reporting segments. 

“Management have acted quickly to reduce costs in the business and are accelerating plans to improve production efficiency, while ensuring flexibility to respond when market demand improves.”

While revenue for the four months ended 30 April was £227million – year-on-year growth of 12% – that includes the contribution from Marley this year that was not there last year.

Marshalls Landscape Products experienced tough market conditions due to its exposure to new house building and domestic RMI to achieve a revenue of £110million compared with £140million in the same period of 2022 – a fall of 21%. 

Marshalls Building Products delivered a revenue of £55million against £61million last year, down 9%, while Marley Roofing Products produced revenue of £61million, down 6%.  

The Group says the removal of some 70 ‘indirect roles’ in the businesses will result in annual savings of around £3.5million.

It adds that it is confident it will be able to generate profitable long-term growth when market conditions improve, although for now it expects the macro-economic climate to remain challenging. 

28 April was World Day for Safety & Health at Work and WJ Group, which paints the lines on roads all over the country, made it its mission to make the roads safer by getting people in the construction industry to drive better.

WJ Group has just won a National Highways Industry Award for excellence in safety, learning and culture thanks to a system it has implemented in its business to try to get its drivers to drive better and be safer. It is now encouraging other companies throughout the construction industry to do the same and is offering to help them do so.

The road marking and highway safety specialist's driver behaviour scheme allowed WJ to review the performance of each of its drivers and combine it with ongoing and significant rewards to maintain standards.

WJ used its vehicle telematics system, which measures driver performance by analysing acceleration, speed, braking, driving style, fuel consumption, daily vehicle checks for compliance, and various other metrics, to develop a traffic light categorisation of its drivers: 0%–84.9% is red (underperforming), 85%–89.9% is amber (average), and 90%–100% is green (good).

Scott Logan, Transport Manager at WJ Group, says: “The key to safety is understanding the conditions your staff work in and the associated risks. At WJ, we recognised that driving is one of the primary risks not only to our own workforce but to colleagues and other road users. That’s how we identified that the most effective way we could address safety was through improving driver behaviour.”

Other changes the company has made include redesigned vehicles, extensive training, enhanced PPE, new technology and Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) accreditation.

Now WJ wants other businesses to adopt similar strategies to improve safety on the highways.

Scott adds: “To alter attitudes, there needs to be a real incentive for colleagues to fully embody the values of the business.

"For us, we award the top three and most improved drivers from each depot with monthly and yearly bonuses. Then the winners are published on our internal social media platform to maintain awareness of the scheme among everyone. This is a great way to harbour a culture of safety within our teams.

“Since introducing the scheme, we’ve seen real improvements.

"When we began, the average performance across the group was 87.58%. Our most recent scores showed it is consistently over 95% – a massive improvement. This has resulted in a 40% reduction in the number of accidents we’ve had and a 44.87% decrease in the costs associated with these accidents. Using data like this really helps to understand the success and failures when implementing new processes.

“Overall, our driver behaviour scheme has been a great success all round, not only delivering significant benefits for the business, but giving our drivers something to strive towards. We are now presenting this across the industry, allowing other organisations to replicate the success we have had and making the roads safe for all.

"We’re encouraging organisations in all industries to take a similar approach to creating a safety culture.”

To find out more about the WJ Group scheme and how it could be applied to your business, click here.

London Stone, the now nationwide hard landscaping materials supplier, has opened its seventh showroom.

The new 450m2 showroom is in Eastleigh, Hampshire, close to the M3 and just eight minutes from junction five of the M27.

The new branch boasts inspirational hard landscaping material displays, including natural stone, porcelain, clay pavers, composite decking, and pergolas and planters.

Steve Walley, London Stone's Managing Director, says: “We’re incredibly excited to open our newest showroom in Eastleigh. We’re looking forward to establishing a relationship with the local community and hope to increase footfall to the surrounding businesses.

"I'm incredibly proud of the new showroom. It’s looking fantastic and is a great setting to view our materials in situ.”

More new London Stone showrooms will be opening soon in Bristol and Altrincham, Greater Manchester, and London Stone also has three existing partner showrooms in Cheshire, Hartlepool and Kent.

London Stone also recently announced that from 2023 it has been certified as carbon neutral. Read more about that here.

Demonstrate your decarbonisation commitment with the revised PAS 2080. Download free here. 

BSI has published a new version of its PAS 2080 on managing and reducing carbon in the built environment, which enables companies to demonstrate their commitment to decarbonisation.

PAS stands for Publicly Available Specification, which means it is free, thanks to the sponsorship of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and the Green Construction Board (GCB). It is also supported by the Construction Leadership Council.

The guidance document, first published in 2016, now includes case studies where the standard has been applied and provides worked examples to assist further with the application and integration of this specification.

The scope has been expanded, with a new emphasis on whole life carbon and a more focused alignment with the Government’s aim of achieving a Net Zero carbon economy by 2050.

PAS 2080:2023 specifies requirements for the management of whole-life carbon in buildings and infrastructure in the provision, operation, use and end-of-life of new projects or programmes of work, as well as the management or retrofit of existing buildings and schemes.

It helps individual companies to understand their impact on the wider network, revealing interdependencies and encouraging early collaboration. It requires the definition of roles and responsibilities and integrated decision-making and procurement processes throughout the lifecycle of a building or other works.

One benefit of reducing carbon is that it almost invariably saves money. Follow Pas 2080 and you can expect to see reductions in material, energy and labour costs during the project, as well as reductions in whole-life capital and operational costs.

The specification aims to:

• Encourage wider uptake and action on carbon management
• Demonstrate your commitment to carbon reduction
• Help give you a competitive edge when bidding for tenders
• Help construction adapt to a low carbon future
• Help users develop their expertise of carbon management
• Help users increase confidence and trust in their practice.

BSI is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with PAS 2080:2023 contributing to Goal 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure, Goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities, Goal 12 on responsible consumption and production and Goal 13 on climate action.