A glass panel has fallen from the eighth floor of architect Ian Simpson’s Beetham Tower in Birmingham.

The 6 × 3ft panel shattered at 6.30am on Sunday 8 July, raining fragments of glass 60ft to the street beneath.

The Beetham Organization, the tower’s developer, said the incident was a result of a build up of nickel sulphide build-up, an impurity that can accumulate within glass and cause it to break. Russell Markow, the tower’s project manager, described the incident as a “one-off”.

The incident is the third safety scare at the Beetham Tower since 2005. During construction in February 2005, a formwork table crashed to the ground from the 39th floor, and in November that year, four aluminium cladding panels fell from the top of the tower in high winds.

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