One-off payments being handed to more than half firm’s 3,300 staff

Galliford Try is spending £1m to help staff deal with the cost of living crisis.

The firm has said 1,800 people out of 3,300 staff will receive a one-off payment of up to £750 which will be topped up with a staff reward bonus currently being worked out.

Chief executive Bill Hocking said the firm was also helping out with financial advice and planning for staff.

galliford

Galliford Try staff are being handed one-off payments to help them deal with rising day-to-day costs

The one-off cost of living payments are being targeted at lower earners and Hocking said were being made because the current situation was markedly different to previous economic crises.

He said: “In the early 1990s recession, there was lots of unemployment. Now it’s not about employment here, it’s about the cost of living. People are employed and are still struggling.”

The firm said it was accelerating plans to make its sites more energy efficient. “We were doing that anyway,” Hocking added, “but we’re looking at more energy efficient plant and offices, not leaving things running when we don’t need to.”

Hocking said the firm’s tender prices would head north to deal with rising energy costs. “The cost of running the business has to be reflected in our prices.”

He said that materials costs were still rising but not at the levels of earlier this year. “They are flattening off but if British Steel is going to put up prices by £150 a tonne people will look elsewhere.”

Hocking was speaking as the firm said revenue in the year to June jumped 10% to £1.2bn with underlying pre-tax profit up 68% to £19.1m. But one-off exceptional items of £13.7m, which includes £7.7m of costs associated with its deal to buy the water business of collapsed firm NMCN last autumn and a further £6m of IT charges, meant pre-tax profit was down from £11.4m to £5.4m.

Revenue at its biggest business, building, was flat at £789m but the NMCN deal added more than £100m of revenue to the infrastructure division with income here hitting £442m. The firm is targeting revenue of £1bn from building by 2026 and £500m from infrastructure.

Average month-end cash was up from £164m to £174m.