Health and Safety

MSPs have given interested parties a month to give their views on proposed building-safety laws. The Scottish Parliament’s Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee launched a public consultation on the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill earlier this week. Ministers north of the border announced plans in September to introduce the…

A demolition contractor has been fined £60,000 after a labourer was hit by masonry in an incident that left him “lucky to be alive”. MAC Demolition, the firm contracted to carry out the works, was fined over the incident, which took place in Kilburn, north-west London, last year. The west-London…

A facade specialist has been fined £240,000 after leaving combustible cladding that it was removing from a building on residents’ balconies. According to a statement from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the incident took place at the eight-storey The Circle apartment block in central Liverpool, where Green Facades was…

Three companies have been fined a total of £420,000 after a child’s skull was fractured by a falling slate tile. Rocare Building Services and Quadra Built Environmental Consultancy were fined alongside the owners of the Moonfleet Manor hotel in Weymouth, Dorset, where the three-year-old girl was struck by the tile…

New regulations requiring second staircases will not be enforced until at least 2026, the housing secretary has announced. Developers will be granted a 30-month transition period within which building regulations applications may follow existing fire-safety rules, housing secretary Michael Gove said in a statement on Tuesday (24 October). The 30-month…

Two companies have been fined a total of £46,000 after a worker fractured his skull falling through a stairwell. Bolton firm Challenger Building Services was fined £30,000 following the incident at a construction site in March 2021, while Total Brickwork, based in Runcorn, Cheshire, was made to pay £16,000. The…

The government will not set a time limit on when accountable persons must share golden-thread information with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) and others – despite responses to a consultation calling for a precise timeframe. In a July 2022 consultation, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) said…

The government has named more than 40 more schools and colleges with buildings that contain reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). An updated list published by the Department for Education (DfE) includes 43 more education settings where RAAC has been confirmed, taking the total to 214. Of these, 202 are still…

A Hampshire-based construction firm has been fined more than £50,000 after a 16-year-old on work experience suffered serious injuries after being trapped under a tractor. The incident happened in August 2021, when Tom Cutler was gaining paid experience of vehicle-repair work at Earlcoate Construction and Plant Hire Ltd in Fordingbridge.…

Almost three-quarters of applications to the government’s £4.5bn Building Safety Fund (BSF) have been assessed as not eligible, according to new government figures. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) says that 3,611 applications for the scheme – intended to fund the remediation of unsafe non-aluminium composite material…