HG Construction lands £225m contract for four Manchester towers

HG Construction has won £225m in contracts to build four buildings at Red Bank, the emerging neighbourhood north of Manchester city centre, for developer FEC.

The award covers plots NT02 and NT03 within FEC's wider Red Bank plans, part of the Victoria North regeneration area. Work starts now on one plot. The other waits on a regulator's signature.

What gets built, and when?

The breakdown is straightforward. At NT02, HG Construction will deliver 316 properties across 34 storeys — FEC's first build-to-rent development on the site. At NT03, the contractor takes on three buildings, named Falcon, Kingfisher and Midrise, totalling 579 properties. That is 895 homes in all.

The timelines differ. Construction on NT02 begins immediately, with completion expected by 2029. NT03 is expected to start in early 2027, pending Building Safety Act Gateway 2 approval from the Building Safety Regulator. A 2027 start dependent on paperwork is, in the post-Grenfell era, simply how big residential jobs now begin.

Anthony Payne, operations director at FEC, said: "With HG Construction on board we're ready to deliver the exciting next phase of Red Bank. Following significant investment in infrastructure and public realm, the neighbourhood is really taking shape, with new homes, green spaces and the next phases of development now coming forward."

Why FEC picked HG

Adam Quinn, CEO at HG Construction, pointed to the firm's manufacturing-led method as the differentiator. "Our in-house self-delivery capabilities, including offsite bathroom and utility pods, allow us to mobilise efficiently while maintaining greater control over programme execution, quality and safety from the outset," he said.

Offsite pods mean bathrooms arrive on site as finished units rather than collections of parts. On a 34-storey tower, that trades site labour for factory precision — a swap contractors increasingly make when programmes are tight and skilled labour is scarce.

"We look forward to working with FEC to deliver high-quality homes and help create a thriving new neighbourhood," Quinn added.

What it means for Victoria North

The contracts confirm that Red Bank is moving from enabling works to vertical construction at scale. Payne's reference to "significant investment in infrastructure and public realm" signals that the ground has been prepared; the towers are the pay-off.

For FEC, NT02 marks its first build-to-rent delivery in the neighbourhood — a test of the operator model in a part of Manchester better known until now for planning documents than residents. If NT02 hits its 2029 completion and NT03 clears Gateway 2 on schedule, nearly 900 new homes will land within roughly five years in one of the city's fastest-moving regeneration corridors.