Building safety round-up: April 2026

• As part of this plan, the government is seeking to remove some more minor work from the oversight of the BSR, with a consultation seeking views on changes to how work is defined and what sort of work might be suitable for a competent persons scheme in the future. The Fire Protection Association, which is funded by the insurance industry, has warned against existing plans to reduce oversight of fibre optic and communication cabling work. 

• In a ruling described as “landmark” by lawyers, the Technology and Construction Court this month ordered Ardmore Group, the parent company of the lead contractor on Portsmouth’s Admiralty Quarter development, to pay a £14.9m Building Liability Order under the act.

  The ruling was said to have extended future building safety liabilities beyond insolvent contractors, and means other companies within the same group could be held liable.

• The government has made £62m of funding available to replace ‘waking watch’ systems with fire alarms in buildings with major fire safety issues that undermine reliance on a ‘stay put’ strategy. 

• A care home in Dorset has been fined £70,000 for failings identified after the death of a vulnerable resident. Portelet Manor in Boscombe was prosecuted by Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service for a failure “to ensure appropriate fire safety arrangements were in place”. It followed the death of a resident who died after sustaining injuries in the smoking area in June 2023.

• The House of Lords has passed a law that guarantees funding for a memorial to those who lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. During the debate Lord Garnier, a former solicitor general, called for tougher laws on corporate crime.

• Dr Barbara Lane and Dr Hywel Davies have been appointed as chair and deputy chair respectively of the Building Advisory Committee, which will assist the Building Safety Regulator in addressing new and emerging risks across the built environment, through expert advice and strategic guidance. Dr Lane, a fellow at engineering firm Arup, served as an expert witness at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. Dr Davies is currently head of technical insight at the Chartered Association of Building Engineers.

• Kingston upon Thames Council in west London has approved an additional £2.9m to complete fire safety works – with 935 actions from fire risk assessments outstanding. 

• At the start of the month, Reform UK’s housing spokesperson Simon Dudley was sacked following comments about the Grenfell Tower fire that he made in an Inside Housing interview. 

• A consultation on product regulation and the fire safety of domestic upholstered furniture has opened. Furniture can have a major impact on fire deaths, particularly through the production of toxic smoke.

• The government of Victoria, Australia, has introduced a law that will wrap up the state’s building remediation taskforce, Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV). The taskforce went through a process of identifying and then managing remediation on higher-risk buildings in the state. It identified 1,600 buildings, with work now complete on 99% of them.

  Remaining functions will be transferred to the state’s existing building regulator and a levy exerted on new building work will be lowered.

  “CSV’s groundbreaking approach to identifying, assessing, classifying and treating combustible cladding risk has saved lives, and it has saved building owners hundreds of millions of dollars. At the conclusion of its programme of work, CSV will have improved building safety for all of us across Victoria,” said the legislative member introducing the bill. 

• An inquiry into the devastating Wang Fuk apartment complex fire in Hong Kong has uncovered important evidence – including that the building’s fire alarm had been turned off for around eight months before the blaze in November last year. You can read more here.
  
  

Guidance

• The BSR has published guidance on applying for building control approval for a higher-risk building, which is available here.

• The Industry Competence Committee has developed a set of ‘principles for informed clients’ to help clients on construction projects contribute to making buildings safer and improve governance and culture. The principles are now subject to consultation, which is available here. 

• After the devastating fire in Glasgow at the historic building in Union Street, the safety reporting service for the construction sector has produced a report on the risk to historic buildings from fire. It discusses how historic buildings were constructed using materials and techniques that differ significantly from those used in modern construction, with major consequences for fire safety.

  These include timber floor structures; hidden voids within floors, walls and roofs; large staircases or vertical shafts; and limited separation between occupancies. The result can be a fire that spreads much more rapidly and causes a much more catastrophic loss to the building.