{"id":13066,"date":"2025-09-18T20:12:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/mcdonald-named-as-new-construction-minister\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T20:12:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:12:42","slug":"mcdonald-named-as-new-construction-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/mcdonald-named-as-new-construction-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"McDonald named as new construction minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Chris McDonald has been appointed as the new construction minister, succeeding Sarah Jones.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s website says that McDonald, who was elected as Labour MP for Stockton North in July last year, officially took up the construction brief last Thursday (11 September).<\/p>\n

But his responsibilities in the DBT and as a minister in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) covers 18 other policy areas including infrastructure, advanced manufacturing sectors and green skills.<\/p>\n

McDonald is the 27th<\/sup> minister to hold the construction minister brief in the past 25 years, replacing Sarah Jones in the role.<\/p>\n

Jones moved to the Home Office as junior minister on 6 September, amid a broader government reshuffle in the wake of Angela Rayner\u2019s resignation as housing secretary and deputy prime minister.<\/p>\n

McDonald\u2019s appointment to the construction brief comes as the government looks to accelerate infrastructure delivery and support energy transition, both areas where he has experience.<\/p>\n

Before he was elected to parliament, the new minister spent two decades working in the steel industry, including senior roles at Tata Steel.<\/p>\n

In 2014 he led the divestment of the Materials Processing Institute from Tata and served as its chief executive until his election as an MP.<\/p>\n

A chemical engineering graduate from the University of Cambridge, McDonald also holds an MBA from the University of Warwick.<\/p>\n

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and is registered as a chartered engineer with the Engineering Council. He is also a professor in practice at the Durham University Business School.<\/p>\n

Macdonald is editor of Millennium Steel Publishing, which is published annually and sent free of charge to engineers and key managers in the steel industry worldwide.<\/p>\n

He is also a trustee of the charity Redhills, which serves as a steward of Redhills Durham Miners\u2019 Hall on behalf of the Durham Coalfield communities.<\/p>\n

His brief at DBT includes oversight of the construction, automotive, aerospace and steel industries, while his DESNZ remit covers clean energy jobs, energy infrastructure investment and industrial energy bills.<\/p>\n

As the minister holding the construction brief, McDonald should have an additional role as co-chair of the Construction Leadership Council (CLC), although the CLC had not updated its website at the time of publication.<\/p>\n

Construction News <\/em>contacted the CLC for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Website design Chris McDonald has been appointed as the new construction minister, succeeding Sarah Jones. The government\u2019s website says that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7282,"featured_media":13067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}