Report dangerous structures

Complaints about possible dangerous structures are investigated immediately. If you have concerns about a building please contact the team on 020 7641 6000. Our staff are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to deal with any incident relating to a building.

Where our responsibilities overlap with other emergency services, a close liaison is maintained to ensure safety at all times. If it is necessary to deal with any immediate danger we can arrange for our own emergency contractor to carry out the work.

Our surveyors have found that the most common causes of collapse are:

• removal of lateral restraint to walls
• failure of over-stressed piers
• inadequate support to chimney breasts
• filling flues with concrete
• using existing brick walls as permanent shuttering to new concrete work
• sheeted scaffolds acting as sails in strong winds and pulling down the wall to which the scaffolding is attached
• undermining of foundations, usually by underpinning which is badly designed and/or poorly sequenced
• overloading of floors by builders' materials
• roof 'spreading' or collapsing due to the new coverings being too heavy for the structure to sustain