Building safety

Around 300 households are under threat of evacuation from their council homes in Aberdeen after surveys found reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). Panels made from the crumble-risk concrete were found in around 500 homes in Aberdeen’s Balnagask area, to the south of the city, including 299 occupied by council tenants.…

Student developer Unite Students has said it expects to recoup up to three quarters of the money it will spend remediating dangerous cladding. The developer said it ultimately expects to get back between 50 and 75 per cent of cash spent on on remediation “through claims from contractors”, it said…

The Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) has warned that building inspectors are being pressured to certify beyond their level of competence. In a notice to its members issued earlier this month, the professional body raised the alarm ahead of 6 April, when all building inspectors will have to be…

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has called for an urgent review into how many surveyors will be registered building inspectors by April – amid growing fears that new building-control regulations will strangle capacity in the sector. The head of Local Authority Building Control last week called for a…

Councils must ramp up the pressure on building owners who fail to fix dangerous high-rises, the housing minister has said. At a meeting on Tuesday (20 February), housing minister Lee Rowley pushed council leaders to explain how they are using £8m of funding “to force rogue building owners to act”,…

A significant number of councils will stop offering building-control services from April unless the deadline to prove professional competence is extended, the head of the service has warned the government. From 6 April, all building-control professionals must have passed a competence assessment and be registered with the Building Safety Regulator,…

London Assembly members have urged London mayor Sadiq Khan to review Greater London Authority (GLA) housing funding agreements with Barking and Dagenham Council after a balcony collapsed at a Bouygues-built housing scheme.  Members of the assembly unanimously passed a motion calling for the review and also called on the mayor…

The government has announced the “final list” of schools and colleges in England that will receive funding to remediate reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), but has not confirmed a total cost. Last year, the Department for Education (DfE) committed to fund the necessary RAAC remediation works, and yesterday it published…

The construction sector is still not ready for some of the significant changes emerging from the Building Safety Act, a major report has concluded. These include companies being able to demonstrate the competence of their workforce and being able to show that no one on their job is working beyond…

Contractors can start building tower blocks with some gaps in design details under the new building safety regime, the regulator in charge has said. In a webinar explaining how the new rules for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) will work under the regime starting in April, Neil Hope-Collins, the operational policy lead…