Health and Safety

Wates questioned the scope of post-Grenfell safety remediation work on Camden Council’s Chalcots Estate before the firm was removed from the job, Construction News can reveal. Documents disclosed to CN show that more than a year before the contractor was taken off the site, a member of its team pressed…

New regulations formalised this week will force owners of high-rise buildings to report on the safety of their external wall system. Under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, a “responsible person” (the building owner, employer or occupier) will have to provide the local fire service with details of the design…

A collapsed company has been sentenced for failing to keep its workers safe after a 48-year-old man was fatally crushed by a 20-tonne excavator. Kidderminster-based Birch Brothers, which went into liquidation last year, had been building a concrete overflow weir structure at a pond in Derbyshire in 2017. Philip McDonald…

Travel to and from the £26bn Hinkley Point C construction site has been stopped after a double-decker bus carrying 70 site workers crashed early this morning. The bus, which was travelling on the A39 at around 6am, crashed and overturned in icy road conditions. Dozens of people were injured but…

Kier has been fined £4.4m for two incidents in which workers hit overhead power lines while upgrading the M6 in Cheshire. The safety breaches took place in March 2018 and January 2019, as Kier was carrying out smart-motorways work valued at £475m for Highways England. According to a statement from…

Proposals to mandate second staircases on tall housing towers could ramp up costs and lead to project delays and cancellations, a building safety expert has warned. Ministers launched a consultation just two days before Christmas on several changes to construction laws on fire risk management. Under the proposed amendments to…

A developer has been fined £200,000 after one of its employees suffered multiple skull fractures when falling from a roof. City Property (Glasgow) was hit with the penalty at Glasgow Sheriff Court shortly before Christmas. It followed an incident in April 2018 when asbestos surveyor Robin Williamson fell 8 metres…

The Scaffolding Association has appealed to business secretary Grant Shapps not to scrap the Work at Height Regulations (WAHR), which are set to expire at the end of the year. The government’s post-Brexit Revocation and Reform Bill is currently making its way through Parliament, containing proposals to automatically scrap more…

Plant and machinery will now be included in the new regulatory regime for high-risk buildings ushered in by the Building Safety Act, the government has announced. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities yesterday released its response to a consultation on regulations covering the definition of a building under…

Magistrates have given a construction boss a custodial sentence after a labourer was crushed to death while working on a house-refurbishment project in Liverpool. David Hartley, a director of North West Facilities, received a suspended 26-week jail term over the incident. The company hired self-employed worker Jakub Fischer as a…