Collapsed crane will be taken to the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton for testing

The collapsed crane at Forest Hill will be dismantled today and taken for testing at the Health and Safety Laboratory in Buxton after nine weeks on site.

Forest Hill crane wreckage removed

The delays in taking down the crane were caused by extensive talks between inspectors, crane specialists, and main contractor Deco Design & Build about the best way to remove it, after the jib was left hanging near residential streets and the railway line.

The Raimondi LR60 crane collapsed on the residential development in south London at around 10am on 11 December. No one was injured.

Julia Brandreth of the Battersea Crane Disaster Action Group said: “We’ll be very interested to know what happened at Forest hill, it’s very lucky someone wasn’t killed.”

Two men died after the collapse of a 165ft crane on a Barratt site in Battersea in 2006. Final tests on that crane are expected to finish in March and a report on the incident is due in June.