The soaring, multi-million pound budgets of two key projects in Manchester city centre have laid bare the economic and specialist trade pressures being faced by organisations both private and public across the country.
At the curtain-clad Manchester Town Hall - a restoration project dubbed the largest ongoing heritage scheme in the UK - the overall impact of inflation to the works has been called 'significant' by the council.
Exact figures, however, show that description to be somewhat generous. When the project first started, an allowance for inflation was budgeted at £15m.
But since then, reveals a newly-published council report, material prices are said to have sky-rocketed by some 44 per cent. Try MEN Premium for FREE by clicking here for no ads, fun puzzles and brilliant new features. It has led to a quantity surveyor assessing the impact of inflation on the project from its conception to July 2025 will be in the region of £36m, more than double the figure first quoted.