Building safety

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…

A building control company which last month saw its high-risk building inspection work taken over by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has been sanctioned by a professional disciplinary panel, it has emerged. In results published last Wednesday (26 June), a disciplinary panel for the CIC Approved Inspectors Register (CICAIR) said…

A quarter of all the cladding remediation projects in England have been completed, seven years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Of the 4,374 buildings identified in England with dangerous cladding by the end of May 2024, 1,088 have been remediated to completion, according to government statistics published yesterday. Buildings in…

Nathan Hooper is a senior associate at consultancy Hollis Updated guidance to the Building Regulations will see all residential buildings that are taller than 18 metres needing to be built with at least one additional staircase and additional evacuation shafts from 2026. How quickly should the industry be reacting to…

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has said that work on more than 50 ‘higher risk’ projects will need to be paused until it can sign off their applications, Construction News can reveal. The move follows the compulsory liquidation of private registered building control approver AIS Surveyors, which was wound up…

The chair of the Building Safety Regulator’s Industry Competence Committee has said the construction industry must ensure a tragedy like the Grenfell Tower blaze never happens again. On the seventh anniversary of the West London fire in which 72 people died, Jon Vanstone called for the industry to honour the…

The final report of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire will be released in just over three months’ time, more than seven years after the tragedy that killed 72 people. The inquiry team announced today (23 May) that publication of its phase two report, which has been delayed three…

Firms under police investigation over the construction of Grenfell Tower are unlikely to find out if they face charges before the end of 2026, according to official prosecutors. The Metropolitan Police expects to receive the Grenfell Inquiry’s phase two report later this year. It will then need “at least between…