
Work starts on nearly 100 North Wales homes in £20m development contract
A Denbighshire-based construction firm has been awarded a duo of design and build contracts totalling more than £20million by North Wales' largest housing association. Wynne Construction began building a new 47-home social housing complex on Berse Road, Wrexham, in March following its appointment from Adra.
With a scheduled completion date of autumn 2026, the £9million development will consist of apartments and a mixture of two, three, and four-bedroom homes that are available to rent.
The contractor is also set to build 49 social houses on Abergele Road, Bodelwyddan, a stone's throw away from its headquarters. Work is expected to start this summer and finish in spring 2027, with the design phase of the £11million project already underway. Join the North Wales Live WhatsApp community group where you can get the latest stories delivered straight to your phone
Wynne Construction commercial director Simon Moreton said: 'We have previously worked on behalf of Adra on major builds including Plas Penhros and Pen Y Ffridd, so I'm looking forward to continuing our positive relationship.
'As usual, we will engage with local suppliers to not only provide the necessary materials, but to boost the region's economy.'
Wynne Construction quantity surveyor Corey Jones said: 'With around 80 to 100 people expected to work on each site at peak times, both developments will have a busy environment, but thanks to our experienced and skilled team members, I'm confident we will deliver quality results.
'In addition, we aim to give back to the community by welcoming apprentices and work experience students on site to give them real insight into the construction industry.'
Huw Evans, Adra's Head of Development, said: 'We're delighted to be working with Wynne Construction on these two exciting new developments. We have a strong track record of working in partnership with the company to build new homes across north Wales. There is an increasing demand for quality, affordable homes that people can be proud of and we have made a firm commitment in our Corporate Plan to continue with our ambitious development programme.
'We look forward to see the work progressing on the Berse Road site and the works getting underway at Bodelwyddan." Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Glasgow Times
17 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Ryanair sets monthly passenger record despite air traffic control strikes
The Dublin-based carrier announced 20.7 million passengers travelled on its flights in July. That is up 3% from 20.2 million during the same month last year. Its load factor – which represents the average proportion of seat filled on its aircraft – was stable at 96%. Ryanair said it operated more than 113,000 flights in July and cancelled 680, mainly because of French controller strikes. French ATC staff took industrial action on July 3 and 4 in a dispute over working conditions. As well as disrupting flights to and from French airports, the walkouts affected flights scheduled to travel over French airspace. This meant many services to or from UK airports were delayed or cancelled. EasyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis previously described the French strikes as 'very, very disruptive' as they forced the airline to cancel 660 flights and cost it £15 million. Around 70% of easyJet's flights either fly to or from a French airport, or over the country's airspace. European air traffic management body Eurocontrol estimated the strikes affected more than one million passengers. Meanwhile, a radar fault suffered by UK ATC provider Nats led to more than 100 UK flights being cancelled on July 30.


The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
OpenAI takes on Meta by launching free and customisable AI models
OpenAI is taking on Mark Zuckerberg's Meta by launching its own freely available artificial intelligence models. The ChatGPT developer has announced two open-weight large language models, which are free to download and can be customised by a user. Meta's Llama models are available on a similar basis, and OpenAI's move marks a departure from ChatGPT, which is based on a 'closed' model that cannot be customised. Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, said the company was excited to add to a stack of freely available AI models 'based on democratic values … and for wide benefit'. He added: 'We're excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible.' Zuckerberg, similarly, has said that making models freely available and customisable will 'ensure that more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities of AI' and that power is not concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies. However, Meta has said his company may need to be 'careful' about taking a similar approach with highly advanced AI models. DeepSeek, a Chinese rival to OpenAI and Meta, has also released powerful models that can be downloaded and customised freely. OpenAI said the two models, called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b-two, outperform similarly sized models on reasoning tasks, with the larger, 120b model achieving a near-equal performance to its o4-mini model in terms of core reasoning. Open AI added that during the testing process it had created 'maliciously fine-tuned' versions of the models to simulate biological and cybersecurity threats but found that they were 'unable to reach high capability levels'. The existence of freely available, powerful AI models that can be customised by developers has alarmed some experts who have warned that they could be adapted to cause serious harm, such as developing bioweapons. Meta has defined its Llama models as 'open source', meaning they can also be downloaded and customised freely, while their training datasets, architecture and training code are also provided. However, the Open Source Initiative, a US-based industry organisation, has said the restrictions Meta places on using its models mean it does not qualify as fully open source. OpenAI has used the term 'open weight', effectively a notch down from open source, which means the model can still be fine tuned – but its workings are not fully transparent to the developer. OpenAI's announcement came amid speculation that a new version of the model that underpins ChatGPT could be released soon. On Sunday Altman shared a screenshot of what appeared to be the company's latest AI model, GPT-5. Meanwhile, Google has outlined its latest step towards artificial general intelligence (AGI) with a new model that allows AI systems to interact with a convincing simulation of the real world. The Genie 3 'world model' could be used to train robots and autonomous vehicles as they engage with realistic recreations of environments such as warehouses, according to Google. The US technology company's AI division, Google DeepMind, argues that world models are a key step to achieving AGI, a hypothetical level of AI where a system can carry out most tasks on a par with humans – rather than just individual tasks such as playing chess or translating languages – and potentially do someone's job. DeepMind said such models would play an important role in the development of AI agents, or systems that carry out tasks autonomously. 'We expect this technology to play a critical role as we push toward AGI, and agents play a greater role in the world,' DeepMind said.


Evening Standard
an hour ago
- Evening Standard
BP fuels FTSE 100 but soft US data tempers gains
The London-based brewer and distiller, which owns brands ranging from Guinness stout to Johnnie Walker whisky, on Tuesday reported a decline of more than a third in its bottom line in the financial year that ended in June, as a slight decline in net sales was compounded by impairment and restructuring costs, unfavourable currency movements, and narrowed operating margins.