Hinkley Point C Bylor JV fire notice: compliance lessons for project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Fire enforcement notice has been served on Bylor JV (Laing O’Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics) at Hinkley Point C after ONR inspectors found significant fire safety shortfalls in multiple advanced-stage site buildings, including inadequate general fire precautions and absence of a compliant emergency lighting system. The notice, issued under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, requires improvements to be completed by 30 June 2026, with interim risk controls expected. Bylor is already facing two ONR prosecutions over a November 2022 fatality and an August 2022 rebar mesh wall collapse causing serious injury.
Technical Brief
- ONR found Bylor’s fire precautions deficient in multiple advanced-stage buildings across the Hinkley Point C site.
- Inspectors cited failures in planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of fire preventive/protective measures.
- Enforcement was issued under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, triggering formal legal duties on Bylor.
- ONR referenced “several similar findings from previous inspections”, indicating repeated non-compliance rather than isolated defects.
Our Take
Within our 60 safety- and failure-tagged pieces, Hinkley Point C is one of the few UK megaprojects where the main civil JV (Bylor, backed by Laing O'Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics) is simultaneously managing multiple prosecutions and a live fire enforcement notice, which is likely to harden ONR scrutiny on all subsequent nuclear new-build bids involving these contractors.
The long compliance horizon to June 2026 at the Hinkley Point C construction site suggests that fire safety upgrades will have to be integrated with peak civil and M&E works, which typically drives re-sequencing, extra temporary works, and higher indirect costs on complex nuclear jobs in the United Kingdom.
With the first hearing scheduled at Bristol Magistrates’ Court for December 2025, project teams on other large UK infrastructure schemes in Somerset and the wider region are likely to treat the outcome as a de facto benchmark for how courts interpret duties under the 2005 Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order on multi-employer construction sites.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
