Building safety

A local authority programme to upgrade fire doors on flats remains stalled more than 18 months after contractor J Tomlinson went into administration. Ashfield District Council in Nottinghamshire’s project to replace 104 fire doors on properties it owns that do not comply with fire-safety regulations was left unfinished after the…

Politicians have slammed Sir Robert McAlpine after it had to close a major road to fix hotel cladding, less than two weeks after it reopened following previous remediation. Loose cladding on the Hilton Hotel and Conference Centre in Woking, Surrey, has caused repeated closures of the town centre’s A320 Victoria…

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has revealed it has allowed construction to start on only two out of 130 higher risk building schemes submitted by developers since the start of the new gateway regime. A Freedom of Information (FOI) request by safety consultancy Project Four has revealed that the BSR…

Doubt hangs over cladding remediation work on more than 60 buildings after a fire safety consultancy was suspended as an assessor last week by housing quango Homes England. Last week, Homes England suspended Tri Fire from its panel of firms approved to conduct fire risk appraisals of external walls (FRAEWs)…

The leader of the national firefighter union has slammed a housing association for progressing with plans to build a near-18-metre-high block of flats with a single staircase. The general secretary of the Fire Brigade Union (FBU) said the plan to build a 17.7 metre site in Penge with a single…

Three government departments are facing an “intractable” maintenance problem, with the total bill swelling to at least £49bn. Property failure is now a “principal risk” for the Ministry of Defence, Department of Education and Ministry of Justice, according to a report released by the National Audit Office (NAO) today (22…

A failure to look beyond historical statistics on construction product safety when regulating the market could lead to an “accumulation of deaths”, the government has been warned. A report commissioned by the Office for Product Safety and Standards, published on Monday (20 January), says that relying solely on incident data…

London’s fire commissioner has warned that tall buildings are still being constructed with major safety risks. Andy Roe told members of the London Assembly’s Fire Committee yesterday (14 January) that a lack of skills and resources meant guidance was not always being complied with. He told the panel that an…

The Department for Education (DfE) has awarded consultancy PwC a contract to investigate and analyse integrity threats in schools built after the Second World War. PwC is expected to present its final findings in early 2026 and receive more than £1m for its work, to be carried out with subcontractors…

Diligent subcontractors are being undercut and losing work thanks to a lack of client knowledge about the post-Grenfell building safety regime, according to a leading trade body. Trade body the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) said clients are still subjecting contractors to aggressive and sub-economic pricing due to a lack…