Final repairs have been completed on Godstone High Street, Surrey, 18 months after a major sinkhole caused a full closure and extensive ground stabilisation works. Engineers had to rebuild the carriageway and underlying formation, install new buried services and reinstate drainage after the collapse exposed significant voiding beneath the road. The incident is prompting local authorities and designers to review ground investigation scope, utility mapping and monitoring on similar chalk and solution-feature-prone corridors.

W G Carter Limited has been fined £120,000 plus £5,247 costs at Bristol Magistrates Court after 59-year-old worker Richard “Felix” Roper died falling from a stripped first floor onto a concrete ground slab at a barn house in Nether Westcote. A joint HSE and Gloucestershire Police investigation found work at height was not properly planned or supervised, with workers allowed onto joists where floorboards and structural supports had been removed while others continued lifting boards. After a Prohibition Notice, the firm switched to installing replacement joists from below using work-at-height equipment and blocking access to the first floor.

Metropolitan Police have submitted 20 investigation files on the Grenfell Tower fire to the Crown Prosecution Service, covering 20 companies and organisations and 54 individuals. Potential charges span corporate manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter, health and safety offences, fraud and fraud-related offences, and misconduct in public office, following work by a 220-strong investigation team. The CPS aims to issue charging decisions by June 2027, the fire’s tenth anniversary, a timetable relevant for dutyholders involved in high-rise cladding, fire safety design and regulatory compliance.