Agreed, Tom. My private list of people who should now be put in prison certainly includes some politicians. It also includes at least one person from every organization that was involved in this refurbishment, whether they followed the letter of the law or not. The fire risk on this project must have been obvious to all who came into contact with it.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The "fire safety ( regulatory reform) june 2005", moved responsibility for fire safety directly to the body that owns or controls a building covered by the act and within the controling organisation there will be a " responsibe person" the mainstay of the regulations is the " fire risk assessment" fra. The idea behind it being that the fra is reviewed periidically or as the buildings circumstances change. This need for review could result from a tenant developing mobility issue and lives on an upper floor to major building works.
The ever growing regulatory burden has seen many councils form "arms length management organisations" almo's , " tenant management organisations" tmo's. This effectively removes direct responsibility, though the responsible person still exists.
This is all well and good, however guidelines also state that where justified works flagged up as needed by the fra can be delayed until major refurbishment takes place.
In an example i know of, a 3 story block built in 1954 still has many original front doors which have just about zero fire resistance, this is noted and notice has been served that the works are " intended" yet 12 years after the act came into being , fire doors are still not in place, yet there is a "stay put "policy in place. The justification being that the common areas have " little combustible material in their construction".
So a seemingly sensible approach to fire safety is stymied by guidance that is used to justify long term delay in implementing improvements.


As for suggestions of provision of escape equipment or additional fire fighting eqpt, this flags up the problem of the eqpt provider needing to be sure that all those likely to use said eqpt are able and have sufficient training, otherwise the view is that use of such items possibly puts tenants at greater risk.

This sort of health and safety ethic goes far and wide, I worked offshore and in the late 80's the fire and survival training was extensive and as realistic as possible at the training centre.
Real smoke,heat,flames in the escape and fire drills
Helicopter ditching and life raft drills in pools that were chilled,wave machines,rain and in the dark.

All this has been sanitised, to the extent of having no reality,
Synthetic smoke, no heat or flame, only fire extinguisher training,
Pool warm, no darkness,wind,waves and helicopter ditching reduced.

All because it was felt the original training was too stressful.

V interesting info, esp artiglio and borpin.

Are we saying that Building Control, or failure of, is not relevant; that it's all been taken out of BC hands, given to the owner/controller of the building?
And that, as suspected, this is a (previous) Labour policy? That would be Prescott's administration of a cabinet policy?
At any rate, grist to Corbyn's mill - New Labour doing Thatcher-work at least as well as the Tory alternative.

Posted By: owlmanWhat about the initial cause of the fire? I heard it mention a fridge exploded, what the hell were they storing in the thing that results in an electrical fault and/or compressor to spontaneously combust with such results.

My thought too when I heard that on the news.
Are any domestic refrigerants flammable?
After a quick search it seems that the answer is yes, as a result of the phasing out of CFCs...

Posted By: GotanewlifeThe risk here is that the perfect storm of crap stuff will get in the way of the only issue that matters: EWI that burned. A solution that uses flammable EWI and firebreaks is not just not failsafe it depends on perfect detailing, humans who give a dam, etc etc all above: in short it is fail likely. ALL the other stuff, audible fire alarms etc etc can only mitigate the loss of life thereafter - if it all worked except the EWI you might have 30 dead instead of the 110....

In a way it is a pite all the other stuff was wrong, the focus needs to be on banning flammable EWI and sorting out the 100s and 100s of similarly attired high rise flats.

Cjard, what you describe only works for fearless, intelligent, young(ish), sobre, single people - for these people you are right though of course.

Think you need to include the UPVC windows as well as the EWI as the fatal combination.

What about the initial cause of the fire? I heard it mention a fridge exploded

From 2009...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210334/Alert-new-wave-exploding-fridges-caused-environmentally-friendly-coolant.html" >Link to Daily Mail article


Selected quotes...

"Alert over new wave of exploding fridges caused by 'environmentally-friendly coolant'"

The problem appears to result from a widespread switch to 'Greenfreeze' technology over the past 15 years and the use of isobutane and propane hydrocarbon gases as refrigerants.

Previously CFCs and HFCs were used in fridges but these gases damaged the ozone layer and contributed significantly to global warming. There are now more than 300million Greenfreeze fridges around the world.

They are designed with safety features to ensure the flammable natural gas inside the pipework cannot leak into the fridge.

However, if this happens there is a risk of a powerful blast as the gas could be ignited by a spark when the thermostat switches off.

So, at root there's this typical privatising blind hope that private companies and corporations will conscientiously police themselves to the standard that public inspectors used to, back in the day -
even when under every pressure to reduce costs to increase profit or even to survive on tight competitive margins -
and knowing that they'll get away with it (just like Volkswagen had every reason to think they would).
And that at a time when the remnant of the public inspectorate is itself fatally starved of resources.

That is what the likes of Corbyn need to make out of all this - the root iniquity and cynical folly, which we all kinda knew and have witnessed, but never had so lethally defined till now.

It's the very same phenomenon as drives us to despair about non-enforcement of energy regulations.

I wish you guys would learn to use the quoting. Please go back and edit any that don't appear properly to set the proper "Format comments as" option.

Posted By: owlmanWhat about the initial cause of the fire? I heard it mention a fridge exploded

Hotpoint tumble dryer?????....

Posted By: ArtiglioThis brings to the fore the unpleasant truth of social housing, done properly its incredibly expensive and if truth were told worse value than the private rented sector.

Can't agree with you there. Landlords are getting fat on my taxes paid via housing benefit. My local council is currently part way through a 3 yr plan to build 1000 council houses and I think this is the best possible way to improve the situation.

Several years ago the Govt, instead of Quantitative easing which simply fuelled the equity/bond market, should have borrowed at effectively 0% and put that money into Council building of social housing. The money would have gone into the real economy, reduced the housing benefit bill, kept market rate of rents down, suppressed the house price inflation by squeezing the profitability of Buy to Rent, provided apprentice slots (a requirement of getting money), boosted other parts of the ecconomy as when folk move they tend to spend, given 1st time buyers a realistic chance of getting a house (house prices down), reduced homelessness, reduced reliance on B&B, etc etc

[rant off]

Borpin

I largely agree with what you say, but funding of council / social housing is less than transparent, an example local to me saw a small development, 7 town houses 8 flats. This was funded by land gifted to the association and grants from local and central goverment, the result was the housing association only needed to fund the project to the tune of 38k per unit.
Sunsequently rents have been set at 80% of the market rent. Rents still largely fundedby housing benefit. So the taxpayer has funded the capital investment to a large extent and still subsidises the rents.
Historically the sical sector has needed to go back to central government for funds to improve stock allowed to fall into disrepair as a result of lack of investment due to rents being insufficient, the prime example being the 22 billion for the decent homes standard under the Blair goverment.
The private sector model is far from perfect and needs better enforcement ( hopefuly councils will dothis under the recent changes to how fines are retained) but it places a the risk on the landlord who is then taxed on his profits. Done properly BTL is not a route to riches other than the hoped for capital gains.
The apprenticeships you mention will not happen, we'll just use labour from the EU, ( conditions or not) the lack of housing is a failure of policy over 50 plus years , rent a room , buy to let, massive foreign investment, blind eye turned to poor/illegal conversions, overcrowding, refusal to accurately quantify poulation size, have all been used to kick the can down the road to the crisis we have now.
Our political system based on 5 year terms does not encourage stable long term planning / investment, there needs to be a 20 year plus cross party national strategy signed into law for such things as housing and infrastructure , rather than the mish mash of dreams and promises we get in an attempt to buy our vote.

Posted By: djhI wish you guys would learn to use the quoting. Please go back and edit any that don't appear properly to set the proper "Format comments as" option.

and then how do you make links clickable because the html "a" tag for urls doesn't seem to work? See my post above.

Borpin,

There is a system ( at least i believe its still in place) regarding income levels and access to social rent levels, it's been dubbed "pay to stay" in some quarters.

Making money on BTL only really works if you bought and held for a good time, so long as you paid off the mortgage, pick your tenants carefully and rents rise ( in my area rents effectively stood still for over 10 years and have only picked up over last couple of years due to an influx of those selling up in london and moving somewhere cheaper combined with demand from london boroughs trying to house those on their lists) the big win is the capital gains if you hold long enough, though capital gains tax has changed 3 times since I started and each time it becomes a greater reason not to sell. At least that's how it works at the reputable end of the market.
The less reputable players need chasing out of the sector and hopefully the change from criminal to civil penalties allowing councils to keep fines will spur on much greater enforcement and give councils resources to meet their obligation to rehouse tenants evicted from premises that are closed down or under go refurbishment.
As pointed out earlier the BTL boom was a response to monetary policy and had the government followed your model additional benefits to those you list may well have been a more stable property market , reduced need for BTL or at least reduce the attraction.
The market was futher distorted in the benefit driven sector of the market when Gordon Brown introduced Local Housing Allowance at the 50th percentile, under this if benfit recipients could find accomodation under the set level they could keep upto £15 a week, instead rents just jumped to meet the new cap. The tories reduced this to the 30th percentile and removed the "cash back" option. But in the intervening period the market at that level was very attractive and values of properties involved jumped considerably.
The demonisation of landlords is in large part a divertion of attention from failed housing policy and whilst you may agree with the tax changes regarding interest costs it's likely to cause real pain for decent people who made an investment decision.
The market is being prepared for the entry of the big pension funds and insurance companies into "build to rent", how this pans out in the long term remains to be seen. But cherry picking of the best tenants could leave social housing picking up the more problematic and result in "sink estates".

My point about social housing funding is that it is not sustainable and in the long run I'd suspect on a cost per week for accomodation is historically higher than BTL, once you factor in grants, vat relief, tax paid by private landlords, inefficiences in social/council sector, loss of assets as a result of right to buy, etc etc, the headline figure of housing benefit paid out is only a small part of the story.
In pure cash terms , I'd say social housing is expensive. However the less tangible benefits to society of social housing may well say otherwise.

Sorry turned into a bit of a ramble, but after 20 years of renting , i've seen some weird things and ideas from all sides. As I said before an open honest appraisal of where the country stands on housing is needed and a long term plan drawn up. Endless tinkering will achieve nothing other than grab headlines and in 40 years when the stock thrown up over the last decade or so starts to need serious attention, we'll hit another crisis point.

So, basically doing what they should be doing as responsible persons under the RRO then, Tom

Barney

just as Barney says, In light of what's happened, any block that's had external cladding of any type, should have its fire risk assessment reviewed and appropriate action taken where necessary.