UK Progress Atlas
UK project milestones, investment, science, healthcare and nature restoration.
Foresight’s second energy infrastructure fund has invested in Gilkes Energy’s Earba pumped-storage hydro project in the Scottish Highlands. The amount was not disclosed. The investment will support detailed engineering, procurement, site investigations and preparations for construction. The consented scheme is designed to deliver 1.8GW of power and store 40GWh of electricity. Main construction has not begun.
Ofgem has approved a £642.1 million cost allowance for National Grid’s Bramford–Twinstead electricity transmission upgrade, £60.6 million below the company’s request. The scheme includes 18km of overhead line, 11km of underground cable, a new substation at Twinstead Green and changes to Bramford substation. It is intended to increase grid capacity for generation in East Anglia and reduce transmission bottlenecks. The decision sets the costs National Grid may recover through the regulated network funding framework.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has secured £42 million to rebuild the emergency department at Queen’s Hospital in Romford. Plans include dedicated waiting areas, improved children’s emergency facilities and space for 195 patients within the redesigned department. The funding enables the project to proceed; construction and opening dates have not been announced.
More developments
The government has announced almost £140 million in funding for 14 urgent and emergency care projects across England. The plans include new treatment facilities, improvements to existing emergency departments and 40 additional double-crewed ambulances for the East Midlands. Among the allocations are £42.1 million to rebuild the emergency department at Queen's Hospital in Romford, £12.9 million for a same-day emergency care facility at Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre and £10 million for a new urgent treatment centre at the James Paget Hospital in Norfolk. The digital projects include £18.4 million over three years for check-in and triage systems across London's emergency departments, and £7.7 million over four years for a coordination centre at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge to improve the management of beds, admissions and discharges. The systems are funded proposals, not confirmed deployments.
Demolition has begun at Bradford’s former Oastler Shopping Centre, marking the start of enabling works for City Village. Clearance is expected to take approximately eight months, while internal strip-out is also under way at the former Kirkgate Shopping Centre. The approved development provides for up to 1,000 homes, public space and retail and community facilities. Construction of the first 97 townhouses is expected to begin in summer 2027.
Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading has introduced ARTHUR, becoming the first UK hospital to use the named robotic ultrasound system in rheumatoid arthritis care. Robotics and AI help capture images of hand and wrist joints, which clinicians use to assess disease and guide treatment. The trust expects the system to expand scanning capacity; quantified improvements in waiting times or patient outcomes have not been reported.
Work has begun on the final link of the Birmingham Eastside Metro extension at HS2’s Curzon Street site. Contractors took possession of the first land parcel to prepare the route for track laying; a second handover is scheduled for 2027. Passenger services to Digbeth Coach Station are planned for 2028, while the Curzon Street stop is expected to open later with the HS2 station.
The Spark has welcomed patients at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, bringing outpatient services together with the National Centre for Child Health Technology. The £24 million facility combines diabetes, sleep, physiotherapy and rehabilitation care with research and technology-testing spaces, including a 34-camera movement laboratory. It is designed to support more than 200 patients a day; that is capacity, not measured daily activity.
Heidelberg Materials has brought a new wash plant and rail siding into service at its Agecroft recycling site in Swinton. The plant can process up to 450,000 tonnes of excavated waste a year into recycled aggregates and recirculates almost all wash water. The company describes it as the UK’s largest wash plant; the precise commissioning day and investment value were not disclosed.
The Lancashire Woodland Partnership has planted 109,833 trees to create 98.76 hectares of new woodland during its latest planting season. Across all types of planting, the county-wide programme delivered 271,418 trees, including 17 new micro-forests and 61 orchards, alongside more than 27 kilometres of new hedgerows. The partnership, which brings together councils, environmental charities, landowners and volunteers, has planted 495,362 trees across its two most recent seasons. These are tree-planting outputs, rather than confirmed numbers of surviving mature trees.
ScottishPower Renewables has installed two continuous cable ducts, each about 1.8km long and 800mm wide, beneath the Suffolk coast at Thorpeness for the 960MW East Anglia TWO wind farm. Horizontal directional drilling created passages for the ducts without an open trench through the shoreline. They will carry the farm’s export cables, with the first cable installation expected in summer 2027. The developer is targeting commercial operation in late 2028.
A new NHS community diagnostic centre has begun treating patients at Rodney Road in Portsmouth. The facility provides MRI, CT, X-ray and ultrasound outside Queen Alexandra Hospital, through a partnership between Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust and Alliance Medical. It adds scanning capacity and brings together other diagnostic services, some transferred from existing premises.