What really happened when a piece of Blackpool’s £100m DWP building fell 100ft

How does a new £100m building hailed as one of the best in Blackpool end up falling to bits in the wind?

Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.

When The Blackpool Lead heard a piece of metal cladding had blown off Blackpool’s new Fylde View office this week, it was a “surely not?!” moment.

Hailed by Blackpool Council and further afield - even winning an award for the same architecture that has gone on to fail - the reality is that it’s only luck that meant nobody was killed this week.

We’ve been asking questions - what we do - and some of them have been answered. Some of them probably can’t be answered yet, but some those involved are just not willing to give.

The Blackpool Lead is marking two years of publishing thorough, independent journalism this month. This January we are giving you a 20 per cent discount if you want to support our work and if you think proper reporting is important. Join us here.

Blackpool briefing

🍴 Marco-Pierre White’s prestigiously-branded restaurant is pulling out of Blackpool. The chef opened Marco’s New York Italian within the town’s Holiday Inn back in May 2024, as part of the Talbot Gateway regeneration project. Blackpool joined a string of stylish destinations across the UK which boasted one of the marquee restaurants under the mercurial chef’s banner. Now, with Marco’s departing, it provides an opportunity for the hotel’s in-house eatery and bar to expand. Platform 9, which operates in the bar and lobby area of the Holiday Inn Blackpool, will take over the Marco’s New York Italian restaurant from January 12.

🛝 Councillors have vowed that play equipment destroyed in a senseless arson attack in a Fylde coast park will be rebuilt as quickly as possible. The arsonists struck just after midnight on December 28 and caused significant damage to the pirate ship in the play area of Anchorsholme Park. Firefighters tackled the blaze with a hose reel jet and remained at the scene until 2am. Anchorsholme ward councillors Anita Cooper and Paul Galley say they are fully focused on ensuring the playground is rebuilt and improved for the future, after meeting police and senior council officers from Blackpool Council. It is expected that the damaged play ship will need to be demolished.

🎒 A couple in Blackpool previously jailed for child cruelty allowed a man who turned out to be a convicted sex offender to babysit two of their children, a review has found. The shocking situation came to light when the older of the two children, aged just four, began to behave in a sexualised way at school. Apart from the revelation about the sex offender, it then transpired that the local authorities in Blackpool did not know the couple had already had five older children taken off them while living in another area. The couple had then moved to the resort in 2017, where they had two more babies. The babies remained in their care after the mother lied to health staff about her previous children – and stayed with their parents despite two police referrals to social services in March and April 2023. Blackpool Council said it accepted there had been “inadequate communication” with the other local authority areas but that recommended changes had already been made.

What really happened when a piece of Blackpool’s £100m DWP building fell 100ft

Work on Fylde View. Credit: A Walk on the Wild Side

By Michael Holmes

The outside of Blackpool town centre’s new high-rise civil service building is being stripped of potentially dangerous metalwork after a section fell from near the top of the seven-storey hub - just eight months after it opened at a cost of £100m.

A 13ft brise soleil fin - designed to keep the sun from beating into the building’s large corner windows - plummeted an estimated 80 to 100ft from above the main entrance during windy weather.

Staff were urgently escorted from Fylde View, which the Department for Work and Pensions said will remain “closed until we determine (the) next steps”.

A cordon was put in place around the building, on the corner of King Street and Deansgate, with passers-by told to keep away in case more fins came loose.

Four further pieces of the facade were later removed by a specialist abseiler.

No one was hurt, though main contractor Vinci Building admitted the incident “could have caused injury” if the metal had hit someone.

A spokesperson told The Blackpool Lead: “We are sorry for any distress caused and the ongoing impact to the occupiers of the building.”

Experts were scheduled to use ropes and cherry pickers this weekend to remove the remaining affected metalwork and investigate the cause of the failure.

The office, which took 27 months to build and opened in May, was designed to house about 3,000 civil servants.

The DWP refused to say how many people were inside when the evacuation took place.

Wednesday’s incident has raised major safety concerns at the 215,000 sq ft office block, part of the council’s £350m Talbot Gateway redevelopment.

One witness told Central Radio: “It’s a brand-new building and it’s already falling apart.”

Another told The Blackpool Lead the wind was so strong on Deansgate that morning they were struggling to walk.

“It’s a wind tunnel,” they said. “People were being blown all over the place.”

Fylde View was named best new building in Lancashire at the 2025 North West Regional Construction Awards.

Council leader Lynn Williams has previously called it “one of the most impressive builds in Blackpool for decades”, while economy chief Mark Smith hailed the “speed” of regeneration in the area.