Building safety

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) is investigating whether individual building control firms have enough qualified inspectors to carry out their duties. In a statement, BSR head of building control professional standards Ged Cooper revealed the regulator had started asking both public and private building control bodies for evidence that they…

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has allocated additional resources to tackle building control delays following a crunch meeting with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC). In a statement, the BSR said it had received an “unexpected increase in applications” for high-rise residential project approval, which it took responsibility for in April.…

Bouygues has booked substantial building-safety liability costs and has said it was impacted by subcontractor collapses last year. The French contractor posted a pre-tax loss of £62.1m in its latest accounts for the 2023 calendar year – 48 per cent worse than its 2022 loss of £41.9m. It tabled provisions…

Output in the construction sector is forecast to fall back because of the impact of the rise in the cost of mortgages on housing demand. The Construction Products Association (CPA) projected that total construction output would fall by 2.9 per cent this year, before recovering by 2 per cent in…

A developer has claimed post-Grenfell fire-safety reforms motivated it to breach planning permission on a luxury build-to-rent development that is now threatened with demolition. A subsidiary of Comer Homes made the claim in a planning inquiry as part of an appeal against an enforcement notice by Greenwich Council to knock…

Contractor and homebuilder Hill Holdings has tabled more than a billion pounds in turnover despite uncertainty over fire-safety remediation and problems with the planning system. The contractor’s uplift in activity generated £1.1bn in the 15 months to 31 March 2024, while the previous set of accounts, for 12 months (up…

Most construction product manufacturers are still not set up to meet one of the key post-Grenfell safety recommendations, according to a survey. Research for the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) found a widespread lack of understanding of the move towards digitised project documents among manufacturers. In a report, the body warns…

Industry body Build UK has released an updated version of the Common Assessment Standard (CAS), including new questions on firms’ building-safety capabilities. The CAS is an industry-agreed set of questions and corresponding assessment standards that can pre-qualify construction suppliers for projects. The updated version (V4) contains a new Building Safety…

Barratt Developments has put aside £192m to remediate dangerous buildings. In a trading update published this morning (10 July), the housebuilder said the “legacy property” sum includes £61.9m relating to increased contingency for fixing fire safety and external wall systems, from the first quarter of the year to June 2024.…

The building inspection industry has missed the deadline for ensuring enough qualified building inspectors are available to meet the high demand for work. The Building Safety Regulator’s (BSR’s) deadline for inspectors to prove their competency was already delayed for three months back in March, following concerns by the Local Authority…