Demolition contractor Reddem Ltd has been fined £4,000, with £4,000 costs and a £1,600 victim surcharge, for operating an illegal asbestos waste site at The Old Gas Works Yard in Wooler, Northumberland, without an environmental permit. Environment Agency and HSE inspections in June 2023 found nine skips with asbestos-containing demolition waste stored in open containers, contrary to requirements for double-bagging and sealed, enclosed skips. More than 40 tonnes of asbestos material were subsequently removed to a permitted facility, signalling continued strict enforcement of asbestos handling and waste permitting rules on demolition projects.

A 23-year-old grounds worker, Kamil Grygieniec, was killed when a ride-on mower without its roll-over protection system (ROPS) descended a steep slope and overturned into a village pond at North Stainley, near Ripon, on 8 October 2021. HSE investigators found the factory-fitted ROPS had been removed and that no suitable, site-specific risk assessment for mowing on sloping, uneven ground had been carried out. Employer MHS Countryside Management Limited, of Bishop Auckland, was fined £27,000 plus £11,166 costs at York Magistrates’ Court for breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

Multiple sinkholes along Summit Avenue near Lewis Street in Phillipsburg, New Jersey have triggered a local state of emergency after one collapse swallowed a loaded dump truck and undermined adjacent properties. Authorities have evacuated several homes, closed the affected road section, and are investigating suspected subsurface voids linked to ageing water or sewer infrastructure beneath the asphalt pavement. Geotechnical teams now face urgent stability assessment, utility leak detection, and staged backfilling or grouting in a constrained urban corridor with active buried services.