Health and Safety

A London local authority put social housing residents at risk by failing to deal promptly with critical fire-safety matters, a watchdog has ruled. The Regulator of Social Housing reported that Camden Council had breached the Home Standard, creating “actual and potential serious detriment to tenants”. The watchdog investigated after the…

Construction firms are in the dark over the logic behind the government’s decision to exempt construction products from a relaxation of rules surrounding product testing. Firms have been warned that a government pledge made yesterday to allow the indefinite use of the European CE mark regime does not apply to…

A 46-year-old man has been injured at a Cala Homes development in Glasgow. The incident took place at the Jordanhill Park housing development in the west of the city on Tuesday. A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We were called around 10.45am on Tuesday, 25 July, to a report of a…

A construction company has been fined £12,000 after a bricklayer fractured his skull in a fall. Worcester-based 2 Counties Construction (Midlands) was prosecuted after the incident, in which worker Scott Ife fell through an unprotected stairwell opening from the first floor on a renovation project. The company had been hired…

The government’s major-projects body has flagged “significant issues” at the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), just over two months ahead of the new watchdog assuming its full responsibilities. In its annual report for 2022/23, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) has given the body, which will lead the programme for the…

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has appointed two bodies to assess building-control surveyors. The Building Safety Competence Foundation (BSCF) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) are the first organisations to become independent competence assessors for building-control surveyors in England. The competence assessment is part of the ‘pathway’ for…

Barratt Developments has spent or allocated £180m on making legacy buildings safe in its latest accounts – and warned that there may be more to come. This was in addition to the £434.6m provision it made in its 2022 accounts for such works. In a trading update released ahead of…

A 57-year-old Balfour Beatty worker has died following a “serious incident” on a construction site at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) campus in Aldermaston, near Reading. The individual was airlifted to hospital on Thursday evening (6 July) following the accident, which is believed to have happened during piling, but later…

There were more than twice as many work-related deaths in construction than in any other industry in the last financial year, new figures reveal. Stats from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that 45 building workers died on the job in 2022/23, up from 29 in 2021/22 and 39…

Six companies, including Morgan Sindall Property Services, have been charged with breaches of fire safety laws over their role in the construction of a retirement village which burnt down in August 2019. The companies are being prosecuted by the Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service for failing to comply with the…