Asbestos management consultancy Acorn Analytical Services has appointed Ben James as commercial manager to lead its sales team and secure larger, more complex consultancy and removal projects. James, a former apprentice carpenter and joiner, moved into asbestos work in his early twenties after his grandfather died from asbestosis and has since progressed from trainee asbestos surveyor to contract manager over nine years. He will oversee new technical enquiries, key account management and site visits, and is qualified to deliver asbestos awareness, non-licensed removal and duty-to-manage training under a Level 3 teaching qualification.

A major fire at LondonEnergy’s Wembley Waste Transfer Station on Hannah Close, Neasden, has required 20 fire engines and about 125 firefighters to bring the blaze under control. The incident at the enclosed waste-handling facility raises immediate concerns over structural integrity of steel frames, cladding performance under high thermal loads, and potential damage to concrete slabs from prolonged heating and quenching. Engineers will need rapid assessment of fire spread pathways through waste stockpiles and building services to inform repairs, resilience upgrades and future fire-separation design.

Plans for a 5m tall wildlife tower at Nuclear Waste Services’ Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) in Cumbria set out a dedicated habitat structure within an active nuclear waste site, integrating ecological features into a highly regulated industrial landscape. The tower will be sited within the LLWR perimeter, requiring careful foundation design and construction sequencing around existing low-level waste vaults and engineered cap systems. For civil and geotechnical teams, the scheme signals growing expectations to incorporate biodiversity structures into nuclear and hazardous waste infrastructure without compromising containment performance.