Carillion to start work on £75m Anfield expansion

Liverpool Football Club’s extension to its Anfield Road stadium will be built by Carillion after the support services group confirmed it had signed a contract with the club.

Work on the £75m project, which will add 8,500 seats to the sporting venue taking its capacity to 54,000, is expected to start this week.

Carillion expects to finish work on the contract to enlarge the ground’s main stand in the third quarter of 2016, and will keep as much as possible of it operational as work takes place.

The project follows almost two decades of debate around the club over whether to move to a new stadium or expand their current home.

Once finished, the expansion will make Anfield the third biggest capacity stadium in league football, behind Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground at almost 76,000 seats and Arsenal’s Emirates stadium at just over 60,000.

The news follows a series of recent contract wins announced by Carillion. On December 4 it announced deals worth totalling £80m for facilities management at Heathrow Airport and two London hospitals for the NHS.

In November it was appointed as preferred bidder for a £200m five-year facilities management contract covering 50 prisons across the London and southern England.

Carillion’s £3bn attempt to merge with troubled rival Balfour Beatty failed in the summer when its approaches were rebuffed three times.

Balfour – which last week received a £1bn approach from John Laing Infrastructure Fund for its investment portfolio – said Carillion’s proposal did address its concerns about risks pulling off the deal.