Health and Safety

Lendlease is one of 11 firms set to be barred from public procurement after it failed to sign the government’s fire-safety contract. Developers across England had until Monday (13 March) to sign a contract pledging to remediate fire-safety defects on buildings they had developed and pledge to reimburse any funds…

The government has announced plans to spend £42m on recruiting more than 200 building inspectors and fire-protection officers to support its new high-rise building safety regime. About 110 building inspectors and 111 fire-protection officers will be recruited and trained over the next three years, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing…

The government’s product safety regulator is carrying out a review into smoke control dampers, after an industry body said faulty installation may be an “Achilles heel”. Smoke control dampers are used to automatically prevent the spread of smoke through a building via dynamic air systems such as air conditioning and…

The operator of the Sellafield nuclear site has been fined £400,000 after a worker suffered life-changing back injuries when he fell three metres from a scaffolding ladder.  Sellafield Ltd, which is controlled by government agency the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, was given the fine after admitting a health and safety breach.…

Several more industry bodies have sounded the alarm over possible “dire consequences” of post-Brexit legislation to scrap EU laws.  Under the Retained EU Law Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament, around 3,700 pieces of EU law need to be reviewed by the end of this year. Some will be…

Winvic has been hit with a £160,000 fine and ordered to pay £25,000 in costs for polluting a brook in the East Midlands. The contractor worked on the £67m East Midlands Gateway (EMG), where it built a strategic rail freight interchange that included a rail interchange hub and 10 logistics plots for the…

A company has been fined £12,000 after a worker installing a roof light fractured his back and ribs in a fall. Renka, a Worcestershire-based supplier of windows and doors, was found to have breached workplace-safety regulations following the incident in Cheshire in August 2021. Workers from the company were attempting…

Testing has found a “very concerning” lack of standards in unregistered personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies, the British Safety Industry Federation (BSIF) has warned. The BSIF tested 127 products sold in 2022 by companies that were not among its members. This included checking compliance with relevant standards as well as…

There is little clarity over future UK rules for working at height while repeal remains possible under the government’s post-Brexit legislation, a scaffolding body has warned. The Work at Height Regulations 2005, which require employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent workers from falling from height, are derived from…

Six education unions have written an open letter calling on the government to take urgent action over schools at risk of collapse. In the letter, the unions said that spending on the buildings had fallen sharply over the past decade, while also pointing out that the Department for Education (DfE)…