Health and safety in the headlines

The £100m refurbishment of London’s iconic Savoy Hotel is running four months late after higher-than-expected levels of deadly asbestos were uncovered.

Specialist Caswell won the £3.2m contract to remove the material in December 2007 and was due to finish last November. But Contract Journal reports that Caswell’s team is still on site. It is thought that all the asbestos has now been removed, but the complex operation has had a knock-on effect on the rest of the project. Main contractor Chorus was due to finish in May but has been delayed until the Autumn.

The mother of a young construction worker who died during construction of a waste recycling plant in Bradford in 2007 has criticised the court’s verdict of accidental death, writes Construction News.

Steven Allen, 23, suffered fatal head injuries when he became trapped by a scissor-grab machine on a site run by contractor JN Bentley. The inquest at Bradford Coroner’s Court heard that none of the firm’s employees had read the machine’s safety manual.

Although the jury had originally been given the option of returning a verdict of accidental death aggravated by neglect, this was later withdrawn over after legal debate. ‘Accidental death does not cover what happened to Steven,’ said his mother, Judith Allen.