Report a dangerous building

Immediate and serious danger

If you believe a building poses an immediate and serious danger to public safety then you should call the emergency services on 999 and not the council. The emergency services will be able to react more quickly and will have the means to immediately cordon off any danger zones.

We work closely with the emergency services and they will contact us if they need one of our surveyors to attend.

If there is no immediate danger to public safety please contact us

Where possible we deal with these buildings during working hours when resources are more readily available. For urgent cases where the danger is more immediate, we operate a 24 hour call-out service.

Contact us

During working hours (Monday - Friday 8.30am - 4.30pm), you can contact us at:

  • Telephone: 01432 261938
  • Email: bce@herefordshire.gov.uk
  • Address: Herefordshire Council Building Control, Plough Lane Hereford HR4 0LE

Outside these hours, you should call the main switchboard on 01432 260000.

Please describe the danger in as much detail as possible to help us determine whether it needs our immediate attention.

Please note: our surveyors aim to respond within two hours of receiving a call.

Action we can take to make a building safe

Ideally, we work with the building owner and support them in their efforts to make the building safe, perhaps by arranging road or footpath closures.

If the building owner is unable or unwilling to undertake the works, the Building Act gives us legal powers to intervene and serve notice on them to carry out the work in a specified timescale. If a delay is unacceptable due to public safety, we also have emergency powers to carry out the works on the owner's behalf, later recovering the costs from them.

View the building control supplementary enforcement policy