£240,000 fine for missed fire detection across three tower blocks

A company responsible for a high-rise residential development has been fined £240,000 after failing to carry out critical fire safety improvements required by Birmingham City Council, according to Landlord Today. Avamore Limited, the company responsible for Solihull Heights, pleaded guilty at Birmingham Magistrates' Court to failing to comply with an Improvement Notice.

The notice required the installation of a fire detection system across the site's three tower blocks, designed to give residents early warning in the event of a fire involving the external walls. The fine was originally set at £360,000 and reduced to £240,000 for the early guilty plea. Avamore was also ordered to pay prosecution costs and a £2,000 victim surcharge.

If your name sits on a high-rise, the question this case asks is not whether you have a fire strategy. It is whether you can prove, today, that every requirement in an enforcement notice has been closed out and signed off.

An Improvement Notice is a deadline, not a discussion

An Improvement Notice is a formal instruction from the local authority's housing or fire safety team. It sets out what must be done, by when, and it creates a paper trail that a court can read. The council does not issue one as a negotiating position. It issues one because it has already decided the risk is serious enough to put in writing.

What makes the Solihull Heights case worth your attention is the specific requirement: a fire detection system across three tower blocks, designed to warn residents about fire in the external wall construction. That is not a generic alarm upgrade. It is a targeted response to a known building safety risk, and it sits squarely in the territory the Fire Safety Act 2021 clarified for England — the external walls, the flat entrance doors, and the structure itself are all part of what the responsible person must assess and manage.

The practical point for a director is this. Once an Improvement Notice lands, the clock is running and the evidence trail starts. If your team cannot show dated completion records, commissioning certificates and a clear audit of what was installed where, you are relying on goodwill at exactly the moment goodwill stops counting.

Birmingham is investigating 26 more developments

The council's statement makes clear this is not a one-off. Dedicated specialist officers continue to investigate fire safety concerns across the city, with 26 further developments currently subject to enforcement action. That is a pipeline, not a warning shot.

Councillor Harris Khaliq, Cabinet Member for City Services and Digital, said residents should never be left worrying whether building owners are taking fire safety seriously, and that the case sends a clear message: if landlords, developers or building owners ignore legal notices designed to protect residents, the council will take action and hold them to account.

Read that as a director and the implication is straightforward. Enforcement activity is not evenly distributed. It clusters where councils have specialist capacity and where the building stock carries known risk. If you hold high-rise residential in a major city, the probability that your file gets opened is higher than the national average suggests, and the quality of your records is what decides whether the conversation stays informal.

The related lesson from other regulators is the same one I have written about before: liability does not stop at the entity with its name on the notice. Directors, accountable persons and the board all carry exposure when a required improvement is left undone.

What the evidence has to show before the notice arrives

The strongest position is the one where you never receive an Improvement Notice because your own inspection regime found the gap first. That means a fire risk assessment that actually addresses the external wall construction, not just the communal corridors. It means a schedule of works with named owners and dates. And it means completion evidence that a third party could follow without your team in the room.

For high-rise residential in England, the Fire Safety Act 2021 and the Building Safety Act 2022 have moved the burden firmly towards documented, accountable decision-making. The official government guidance on the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 sets out what responsible persons must record and share for buildings of different heights, and it is worth checking your current file against it rather than against last year's template.

If you want a worked example of how a single missed wall check becomes a named liability, the Fire Safety Act 2021 breakdown is the one I would send to a new building manager in week one.

Details of the specific works at Solihull Heights beyond the fire detection requirement have not been released, and the council has not named the 26 other developments under enforcement action. That absence of detail is itself a reason to check your own position rather than wait for a list.

Your 60-second self-check

• Could you produce, today, the dated completion evidence for every requirement in any open or closed Improvement Notice across your portfolio?
• Does your current fire risk assessment explicitly address the external wall construction and the flat entrance doors, with a named owner for each action?
• If a council officer asked for your fire detection commissioning records for each tower block, would you have them in one place within the hour?

If any of those gave you pause, the free five-minute Director's Risk Check is the fastest way to see where your portfolio actually stands. It gives you a control score, shows your breach exposure against official sources, and produces a board-ready briefing you can send to a colleague to answer on your behalf.

Herman's verdict

A £240,000 fine is the visible cost of ignoring an Improvement Notice; the invisible cost is the year of enforcement attention that follows, and the only defence that survives contact with a magistrate is a dated, signed record that the work was done.

— Herman