CMA inspectors raided a construction firm investigating suspected bid-rigging on school-roofing contracts; two staff hid a phone rather than hand it over. Nearly two years on, the regulator has still not formally accused anyone of the rigging itself.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. On 24 September 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority announced its first-ever civil penalties against individuals for concealing evidence during an investigation: £20,000 for M&J Group's estimating director, Barry Pirrie, and £5,000 for office manager Tracey Woods, plus £25,000 for the firm itself, after the pair removed a phone and paperwork during a December 2024 dawn raid [[1]]. The release frames the fines beside the CMA's "enhanced enforcement powers, which came into force in January 2025", then immediately concedes the conduct happened before those powers existed, so all three penalties used the old, lower cap [[1]]. A second finding: the bid-rigging investigation the raid served, into contracts for school roof repairs funded by the Department for Education, has run since 11 December 2024 with no formal accusation issued against any of the twelve firms now under investigation, even as the CMA's own September paper calls bid-rigging in public procurement a matter for urgent action and puts the annual cost to taxpayers at £1 billion to over £3 billion [[4]]. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
A dawn raid on a Bedford roofing contractor does not usually make trade press as far away as Brussels, but M&J Group's did. On 10 December 2024 CMA officers arrived at the firm's premises under a warrant, investigating suspected bid-rigging in roofing and construction contracts, some of them funded through the Department for Education's Condition Improvement Fund, the scheme that pays for school building repairs [[2]][[3]]. What happened next is now a matter of regulatory record: the CMA's own penalty notice finds that estimating director Barry Pirrie told office manager Tracey Woods to take a work mobile phone and paperwork off the premises, and that Pirrie twice told CMA officers he did not have a work phone [[3]]. The items were returned by the end of the day. On 24 September 2026, almost two years later, the CMA announced the consequence: the first civil penalties it has ever imposed on individuals for concealing evidence during an investigation [[1]].
The claims, tested
| The CMA's own words | What its own documents show | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "Under the CMA's enhanced enforcement powers, which came into force in January 2025, businesses that fail to comply with CMA investigative requirements may face higher penalties for noncompliance" (fixed penalties of up to 1% of turnover, daily penalties of up to 5% of daily turnover, or both) [[1]] | The very next paragraph of the same release: "As the conduct took place before the CMA's new powers came into force, M&J is subject to the lower maximum penalty that applied at the time. The maximum penalties for individuals have not changed" [[1]]. The penalty notice confirms the fine was imposed under "section 40A(1) of the Competition Act 1998 (as it applied in December 2024)", capped at £30,000 fixed for the firm, not the new 1 per cent of turnover [[3]], page 4 | The release leads with the enhanced regime, then quietly confirms none of it applied to this case |
| "First civil penalties issued against individuals for concealing evidence during an investigation" [[1]] | Checked against the CMA's own case record: the penalty notice itself cites a prior case, Fender, in which the CMA fined a company £25,000 for concealing documents during a 2019 inspection, but that penalty fell on the business, not named individuals [[3]], page 19. The "first against individuals" claim holds | Accurate, and correctly scoped |
| M&J's 2024 turnover was £56,291,952; the CMA's own assessment: a fine "of up to the statutory maximum of £30,000 - which would amount to only 0.05% of its 2024 turnover" [[3]], page 18 | The CMA's own figures show the cap that applied to this case was financially trivial for the firm it was imposed on, a point the regulator makes itself rather than one this teardown is reading in | The CMA's own document, not an outside critic, calls its own available penalty inadequate to the firm's size |
| The inspection served "an investigation into 12 construction companies suspected of bid rigging" in contracts including those "funded through the Department for Education's Condition Improvement Fund (CIF)", a scheme that "awards millions of pounds each year" [[1]] | The CMA's case page records the investigation opened 11 December 2024, expanded in scope on 29 January 2026, named all 12 businesses on 30 June 2026, and as of 24 September 2026 states "no assumption should be made... that the CA98 has been infringed", with a case timetable running "investigation continuing" through December 2026 [[2]]. The DfE's own 2026 to 2027 CIF outcome confirms "over £450 million" was allocated to school building projects in the current round alone [[5]] | Almost two years in, the regulator has named every firm under suspicion but formally accused none of them; the fund at stake is not "millions", it is hundreds of millions a year |
Two years of "investigation continuing"
The CMA's case page for the roofing investigation reads, at first glance, like a document showing steady progress: a first-published entry in December 2024, a timetable update in June 2025, a scope expansion in January 2026, all twelve suspected firms named by name on 30 June 2026, and the September 2026 penalty notices as the latest action [[2]]. Read as a timeline rather than a list of updates, it shows something closer to stasis on the substantive question. The page's own case-state field still reads "Open". Its "Notice of penalty" section is explicit that the September penalties are procedural, not a finding on the merits: "Today's penalties concern failures to comply with the CMA's investigatory requirements and are separate to any findings from the competition investigation, which remains ongoing and no assumptions should be made as to whether competition law has been broken" [[1]]. The case timetable's current entry, covering May to December 2026, describes "further evidence gathering, analysis and review of information gathered", the same description used for the previous twelve-month stretch [[2]]. No Statement of Objections, the formal step that sets out the CMA's case against named parties, has been issued against any of the twelve firms.
That slow pace sits awkwardly next to the CMA's own account of why bid-rigging in public procurement matters. On 8 September 2026, sixteen days before the M&J penalty notices, the CMA published "Rigged bids, real costs: a case for urgent action on bid rigging in UK public procurement". Its key-stats box opens with three figures: roughly £400 billion is spent on UK public procurement annually, bid rigging "has the potential to increase prices by 20% or more", and bid rigging "has a possible impact of £1 billion to over £3 billion on the UK economy" [[4]]. The paper calls for government to make tackling bid rigging "an explicit public procurement priority" and for public bodies to collect bid-level data so collusion can be screened for at scale [[4]]. The M&J case is precisely the kind of procurement the paper describes, contracts awarded by a public body, here schools drawing on DfE capital funding meant, in the CMA's own words, to ensure "premises are safe for pupils and staff" [[1]]. The paper asks for urgency. The CMA's own case against the firms it names shows none yet.
What the obstruction penalty actually shows
The enhanced-powers framing is where the release is least careful with its own evidence. Two paragraphs after introducing the fines, it describes the new regime, fixed penalties of up to 1 per cent of a business's turnover, daily penalties of up to 5 per cent, introduced by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 from January 2025, as the context for businesses facing "higher penalties for noncompliance" [[1]]. It is true that regime exists. It is also true, stated in the same release one paragraph later, that it had nothing to do with this case: "As the conduct took place before the CMA's new powers came into force, M&J is subject to the lower maximum penalty that applied at the time" [[1]]. The firm's own penalty notice spells out what that meant in practice. M&J's 2024 turnover was £56,291,952; the statutory cap that actually applied, £30,000 fixed, is, in the CMA's own words, "only 0.05% of its 2024 turnover" [[3]], page 18. Under the new regime the same conduct, had it happened after January 2025, could have exposed the firm to a fine of up to £562,919, nearly nineteen times what the old cap allowed. None of that applied here. The release's own next-door admission makes this clear to a careful reader, but the structure, enhanced powers first, fine figures second, old-cap caveat third, reads as more deterrence than the case itself delivered.
The CMA's document is honest about one more thing worth crediting: it does not overstate what the individual conduct proves about the underlying allegation. Pirrie's removal of the phone, admitted in his penalty notice, and his false statements to officers are treated by the CMA as evidence the firm "might reasonably be expected to derive an advantage from its concealment" of CIF-related meeting notes [[3]], page 12, not as proof the firms colluded. That restraint is correct and the release does not claim otherwise.
Two documented mistakes, four stars. (1) The release presents the fines beside the CMA's enhanced 2025 enforcement powers without flagging, until the following paragraph, that none of those higher caps applied to this case; the firm and both individuals were fined under the pre-2025 regime. (2) The underlying bid-rigging investigation into twelve named construction firms, covering contracts within a Condition Improvement Fund programme worth over £450 million this round alone, has run since 11 December 2024 with no Statement of Objections issued, sixteen days after the CMA's own paper called bid-rigging in public procurement a matter needing urgent action.
Credit where due
The "first against individuals" claim is accurate and correctly scoped against the CMA's own prior Fender precedent, which fined only the company. The release is also careful, more careful than many regulatory announcements, to state plainly that the obstruction penalty is "separate to any findings from the competition investigation" and that "no assumptions should be made as to whether competition law has been broken" [[1]]. And the penalty notice itself does not hide the numbers that undercut the enhanced-powers framing; the 0.05 per cent figure comes from the CMA's own assessment, not from outside scrutiny of it. A regulator that publishes its own reasoning in enough detail to let the gap be checked is doing something right, even when the gap is real.
Sources
- CMA fines construction firm and staff for concealing evidence during inspection, GOV.UK, 24 September 2026.
- Suspected anti-competitive conduct in relation to the supply of roofing and other construction services, CMA case page, last updated 24 September 2026.
- M&J Group (Construction & Roofing) Ltd: administrative penalty notice (PDF), CMA, 17 September 2026.
- Rigged bids, real costs: a case for urgent action on bid rigging in UK public procurement, CMA, 8 September 2026.
- Condition Improvement Fund: 2026 to 2027 outcome, Department for Education, 22 May 2026.