The most powerful voice in the demolition industry, the NFDC has championed the standards and professionalism of its members for more than 75 years.

Backed up with regular member site audits and appropriate training from the NFDC’s partnered provider, the NDTG, ensures that expertise is maintained and reinforced.

NFDC’s added value lies in the peace of mind and reduced risk it provides to anyone planning or commissioning a demolition project.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE NFDC

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

(Extract taken from The History of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors)

The year is 1941. London is shrouded in smoke and dust, the aftermath of nine consecutive months of targeted and unrelenting bombing by the German Luftwaffe intended to demoralise the British into surrender and subsequent invasion.

With France having fallen under German control, the German war machine had fixed its sights on Britain in general and on its capital London in particular. in late august 1940, the Luftwaffe had attacked industrial targets in both Birmingham and Liverpool. during a planned raid on Thames Haven on 24 august 1940, some German aircraft strayed over London, dropping bombs and incendiary devices on Bethnal Green, Hackney, Islington, Tottenham and Finchley.

This assault on the seat of British power and the nation’s capital resulted in retaliatory attacks on Berlin, with British bombs falling on Kreuzberg and Wedding. On 5 September 1940, Hitler – angered by the attack on Berlin that reportedly left 10 German citizens dead – issued a directive for “disruptive attacks on the population and air defenses of major British cities, including London, by day and night”.

The first intentional air raids on London were aimed primarily at the Port of London. late in the afternoon of 7th September 1940, 364 Luftwaffe bombers escorted by 515 fighter aircraft filled the London skies.

A further 133 bombers attacked that night. By morning, 436 Londoners lay dead, 1,666 had been injured, and the aerial offensive that would become known to all as the Blitz was underway.

By mid November, the Germans had dropped a staggering 13,000 tonnes of high explosives and more than one million incendiary devices onto London. By the end of may 1941, more than 43,000 civilians – over half of them in london – had been killed by the ceaseless bombing.

But, as the history books recall, Londoners are made of sterner stuff. and rather than becoming demoralised, these continual and brutal attacks merely stiffened their resolve.

At the behest of the Government, civilians unable to join the military were banded together to form the Home Guard, air raid Precautions service, auxiliary Fire service, and a host of other organisations.

A call went out from the heavily fortified Cabinet War rooms, the secret underground bunker hidden deep below the treasury to house the Government during the war, to gather together the only individuals with the knowledge, experience and expertise required to deal with the million
London houses destroyed or damaged in the nation’s capital: London’s Demolition Contractors.

With conscription, injury and death having depleted their employee numbers, this group of demolition professionals was brought together at the direct request of Winston Churchill to make safe homes damaged by bombs and incendiaries, and to help begin the clean-up operation.

This rag-tag group of demolition experts, brought together in adversity and forged in battle, would form the basis of what would become the demolition industry’s oldest, most enduring and influential organisation: The National Federation of Demolition Contractors.