Havering Council has approved an increase in its high-rise lift safety programme from about £3.8m to more than £5.4m as building safety works are extended to four additional tower blocks.
The decision, recorded on 29 October, covers Highfield Towers and Uphavering, Overstrand and Parkview houses. Havering's decision record describes the move as an increase to the budget for building safety works required to the lifts at those four blocks, added to an existing high-rise lift refurbishment contract.
The existing contract was awarded to Lift Specialists Limited for £3,854,478 and originally covered Edinburgh House, Elizabeth House, Mountbatten House and Victoria House on the Delta estate, together with Dryden Towers and Kipling Towers in Harold Hill. The published procurement record describes the work as the replacement and reconfiguration of lifts across the six residential blocks.
The revised programme takes the expected total above £5.4m, including contract and consultancy costs. Local reporting on the council decision says the programme will also take seven months longer than previously planned.
Highfield Towers in Collier Row, Havering. The block forms part of the council's wider high-rise building safety programme, which includes lift, fire protection and remediation works across its older residential towers. Image: London Construction Magazine
Four more blocks added to the lift scope
The additional work is intended to improve the way the lifts operate during an emergency. In the affected blocks only one lift currently stops at every floor; the revised works are intended to provide access from both lifts at each level for residents and the London Fire Brigade.
Havering's wider building safety programme covers ten older residential towers above 18 metres. The council told Cabinet in April 2025 that all ten had been registered with the Building Safety Regulator and that a Building Safety Case File had been prepared for each building.
Calfordseaden surveyed the ten blocks for the council and developed outline designs and employer's requirements. The resulting work programme includes replacement of non-compliant spandrel and window infill panels, automatic opening vents, removal of ventilation shunt ducts where they breach fire compartmentation, replacement ventilation, firestopping, LD1 fire and smoke alarms and new sprinkler systems with secondary backup supplies.
Havering maintains a live high-rise building safety works register for the programme, covering the Delta and Petra estates, Kipling and Dryden Towers and Highfield Towers.
The lift variation sits inside a £13.4m safety programme
The lift contract is separate from Havering's broader £13.4m programme of building safety remedial and improvement works. Cabinet approved procurement of that programme in April 2025 through Lot 1 of the Fusion21 Refurbishment, Construction, New Build and Modular Buildings Framework.
The £13.4m figure covers the council's planned pre-construction services and subsequent works across the older high-rise portfolio. Havering chose a two-stage route so the selected contractor could work on design, specifications, resident consultation and programming before a construction price was agreed.
The council's April 2025 Cabinet report set the tender weighting at 60% quality, 30% price and 10% social value. It also required bidders to demonstrate experience of occupied buildings, design capability and Building Safety Regulator applications.
The proposed Stage 2 contract uses the 2024 JCT Design and Build form with amendments covering the Building Safety Act and applications to the regulator. Havering also specified that the contractor would take the Building Regulations principal designer and principal contractor roles alongside the corresponding CDM duties.
That procurement structure mirrors a wider change in higher-risk building work, where design evidence and regulatory approval increasingly sit directly on the construction programme. LCM's Gateway 2 application guide examines the documents and design coordination required before regulated work can move into construction.
Existing buildings are driving new scopes of work
Havering's 2025 report says the work arose from action plans within the Building Safety Case Files for the ten towers. Those plans divided the identified measures into repairs, replacement of components where evidence of compliance was missing, required improvements and recommended additions such as sprinklers and LD1 alarms.
The council also commissioned what it calls an "aspirational fire strategy" for each block, setting out additional measures needed to move the existing buildings towards the fire safety standard Havering wants to maintain for the rest of their service lives.
That evidence-led approach is increasingly visible across London's existing higher-risk housing stock. At Archway Heights in Islington, for example, LCM found that regulated remediation remained at the pre-construction stage while further evidence was being dealt with through the Building Safety Regulator process.
For Havering, the immediate change is commercial as well as technical: an existing £3.85m lift replacement contract now sits within a larger lift safety scope across all ten older towers, with the latest four-block addition taking the expected programme cost above £5.4m.
The council's latest decision record authorises the increased budget for the additional lift safety works.
Expert Verification & Authorship
Founder & Author, London Construction Magazine | Construction Testing & Investigation Specialist