Jamaica is about to hire some of Britain’s best-known engineering and project-management firms to help run the largest rebuilding effort in its history. Prime Minister Andrew Holness said on Tuesday that the government will sign a cost-sharing agreement with the United Kingdom at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda, which runs from 1 to 4 November.
Under the arrangement, Jamaica and the UK will split, 50/50, the cost of deploying specialists from Arup, Mace and Gleeds — the three firms that formed the UK Delivery Team behind Peru’s reconstruction after the 2017 El Niño floods. They will work inside the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA), the agency created this year to fast-track post-Melissa infrastructure, while it recruits its permanent staff.
The deal buys expertise, not houses. No figure has been announced for its total cost, the number of experts, or how long they will stay. But Peru’s experience offers the best available guide to what Jamaica may get — and where the limits lie.
Sources: JIS, 28 Oct 2026; UK Delivery Team impact evaluation.
What Holness Announced
Speaking at Jamaica House on the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Melissa, Mr Holness said bringing in specialists with direct reconstruction experience was the fastest way to strengthen NaRRA while it builds a permanent team.
“They will work alongside Jamaican professionals with capacity building and knowledge transfer built into the arrangement,” he said. “Our objective is to get projects moving faster now while equipping Jamaicans with the skills and systems to lead delivery over the long term.”
Earlier this year, a delegation led by Robert Morgan, the minister responsible for works, travelled to Peru to inspect infrastructure delivered by the British team and study its methods, according to the Jamaica Information Service.
NaRRA Will Not Fix Your Roof
The Prime Minister used the same briefing to draw a hard line around what NaRRA does — and does not — do. Household recovery, including roof repairs, stays with the ministries and agencies already running those programmes.
“There has been a false narrative suggesting that NaRRA will undertake recovery efforts. NaRRA was never designed to do that,” he said. “NaRRA is designed to reconstruct better infrastructure and systems that will allow us to withstand the next disaster that may come so that another generation doesn’t have to go back and start again.”
That distinction matters to the tens of thousands of families still waiting for help. As our one-year investigation found, the government’s ROOFS repair programme has reached only about half of the 118,000 households assessed, and modular homes for families who lost everything are only now being installed. The British experts, as described, will not change that directly. Their job is roads, bridges, water systems, schools, health facilities and town centres.
The Peru Playbook
Peru’s 2017 “coastal El Niño” destroyed roads, schools, clinics and river defences along the country’s northern coast. In 2020, Peru’s Authority for Reconstruction with Changes signed a government-to-government agreement with the UK. The British team was hired not to build, but to manage: setting up a project management office, running procurement, using international contract models and providing delivery assurance.
The portfolio was large: 74 schools, between 15 and 18 health facilities, and flood-control plans for 17 to 19 river basins plus urban drainage systems in seven cities. The firms describe the contracting they oversaw as worth more than S/12.5 billion, roughly US$3.3 billion.
Source: UK Delivery Team, Peru reconstruction impact evaluation. Figures are reported by the delivery team itself.
By the end of 2023, the team reported 22 schools and two health facilities delivered. By March 2024, Peruvian media reported 44 new schools open with more than 31,000 students, and 30 more due in 2025. The team’s own evaluation says completed flood works now protect more than 100,000 people.
The caveats
Three caveats deserve attention. First, the most widely quoted results come from the firms’ own impact evaluation; we could find no independent public audit of them. Second, flood defence has lagged: completed works protect a little over 100,000 people so far, against more than 4 million Peruvians the programme was expected to benefit. Third, the agreement was meant to run for two years, from July 2020 to June 2022. It was extended repeatedly, through 2023 and then 2024. Even with the British team, Peru’s reconstruction has taken most of a decade.
| Peru (2020 onward) | Jamaica (2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Disaster | 2017 coastal El Niño floods | Hurricane Melissa, Oct 2025 (Category 5) |
| Local agency | Authority for Reconstruction with Changes (ARCC), later ANIN | National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority (NaRRA) |
| UK firms | Arup, Mace, Gleeds | Arup, Mace, Gleeds |
| Funding model | Government-to-government agreement with UK | 50/50 co-funding of experts with UK |
| Scope | 74 schools, 15–18 health facilities, flood defences | Roads, bridges, water, schools, health, town centres |
| Contract value overseen | S/12.5bn+ (~US$3.3bn) | Not yet disclosed |
| Planned duration | 2 years; extended to 2024 | Not yet disclosed |
Sources: Mace; Mace (extension); Andina; JIS.
A Fast Lane, by Design
NaRRA was built to bypass the parts of government Mr Holness blames for slow delivery. Its founding law, tabled in March and passed by the Senate without amendment on 8 May, gives it special powers to fast-track development approvals and procurement. Its chief executive is retired Major General Antony Anderson, a former army chief, police commissioner and ambassador to Washington.
On Tuesday, Mr Holness argued that speed is itself a form of savings. “If we had built 10 per cent of what we are building today in terms of road infrastructure, water infrastructure, if we had built it five years ago it would cost us, in some instances, 50 per cent less,” he said. Projects he has reviewed, he added, were “trapped in permitting, investment appraisals, contracting” until their costs doubled.
He also tied the urgency to the public finances. After Melissa, the government invoked the escape clause in Jamaica’s fiscal rules, a move the Independent Fiscal Commission validated after estimating the storm’s fiscal impact at 5.3% of GDP over 2025–29. Public debt, which had fallen from about 140% of GDP in 2012 to 62% in 2024, is now forecast to rise to about 68% in 2026, according to the IMF. “We have a limited window in which we can change our fiscal rules to accommodate extra expenditure,” Mr Holness said. “So we have to move fast, we cannot tolerate delay.”
Speed has drawn scrutiny. At the same briefing, Mr Holness defended NaRRA chief executive Antony Anderson’s J$40 million annual salary, saying the pay was benchmarked to the demands of the job and that careful spending is not the same as being cheap. Oversight rests with a new seven-member committee, JAMRROC, chaired by economist Peter Blair Henry, which has promised quarterly public updates, alongside annual audited accounts, Auditor General scrutiny and a public register of approved projects.
NaRRA So Far
Sources: JIS; JIS; JIS; JIS; IMF.
What It Means for Property
For homeowners and investors in the west, the significance of the deal is indirect but real. Roads, water mains, drainage and bridges determine where housing can be built, how much it costs and how safe it is. Peru’s British-managed flood plans were designed river basin by river basin; if Jamaica follows the same model, maps of flood risk and safe building zones in Westmoreland, St Elizabeth and Hanover could be redrawn — with direct consequences for land values and insurance.
New infrastructure also tends to anchor new settlements. The government has already said it will move some communities away from vulnerable coastlines. Where NaRRA puts water systems and roads first, housing will follow. Our earlier report on the partnership noted initial NaRRA projects that include prefabricated homes at Luana in St Elizabeth and community water tanks in Westmoreland.
Questions to Watch at CHOGM
- Cost: What is the total value of the agreement, and what is Jamaica’s 50% share?
- Scale and duration: How many British experts, for how long, and on which projects first?
- Accountability: Will the delivery team’s results be audited independently, rather than self-reported as in Peru?
- Local capacity: How many Jamaican engineers, quantity surveyors and project managers will be trained, and will NaRRA publish those numbers?
- Local contractors: Will international contract models favour foreign builders, or open work to Jamaican firms?
Mr Holness has staked NaRRA’s credibility on speed. Peru suggests the British team can help deliver it. Whether Jamaicans see faster roads, safer water and sturdier schools — and when — will depend on details not yet made public.
Jamaica Homes News is independent. Quotations are from the Prime Minister’s press briefing at Jamaica House on 27 October 2026. This article is not financial or investment advice.
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