Lakanal House landlord complains of ‘zilch warning’ from fire brigade on enforcement notices
Southwark granted more time for fire safety work
Southwark Council has been handed a two-month extension to compulsory work it is carrying out to make three of its tower blocks fully fire resistant.
The London Fire Brigade originally told the council that the work must be complete by 30 October, after issuing enforcement notices on three blocks - Perronet House, Marie Curie House and Castlemead House.
The notices outlined a raft of faults including the absence of suitable fire risk assessments for the blocks and fire doors that were either not fire resistant and/or self-closing.
But after lobbying from the council - which says it wants to do additional work on top of that demanded in the notices - the fire brigade said it had granted an extension.
The fire safety work on Castlemead and Perronet will now have to be complete by the end of the year.
The notices were issued following a fire which killed six people in another Southwark tower block - Lakanal House - in July. Inside Housing last week launched its Safe as Houses campaign, calling for emergency fire procedure notices in every corridor of high-rises and a national database of all UK tower blocks.
Perronet resident Janet Yatak said she wanted the safety work on her block to be completed by the original deadline.
The LFB has been forced to defend itself after Gill Davies, strategic director of housing and environment at Southwark Council, criticised the way the enforcement notices had been issued in the first place. She said that before the notices were issued the fire brigade had ‘told me face to face that there were no significant issues’.
‘I was expecting no significant issues from them - no enforcement notices,’ she added. ‘I have written to the fire brigade saying how deeply unhappy I was to have received zilch warning.’
But the LFB said: ‘The issues we found at those three housing blocks were verbally communicated to Southwark Council immediately following our inspections.
‘This was followed up by a meeting on 7 August with senior officers from Southwark Council to discuss the seriousness of the issues we had found. Three enforcement notices were subsequently issued on 11 August.
‘It is regrettable that the London Borough of Southwark feels that enforcement action was not necessary. However, the issuing of enforcement notices is normal procedure for dealing with breaches of fire safety regulation of this level of non-compliance.’
Ms Davies added that she did not want to be in conflict with the fire authority and that was the reason it had not appealed against the notices.
‘We have proceeded with works,’ she added.
Inside Housing is running a campaign calling for action to stop preventable deaths from gas and fire. For more on this see our Safe as Houses campaign page.
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Readers' comments (6)
Janet Yatak | 02/10/2009 12:17 pm
The whole idea of the Enforcement Notices were to ensure that Southwark did the work by a certain timescale, they are not doing our front doors until the first week of November when the fire brigade wanted them to be done originally by the end of October , Whilst our front doors do not meet fire regulations we are all at risk and the longer Southwark take to do it, the longer we are at risk
I am amazed the Fire authority gave them an extension as Southwark have done nothing but criticise the Fire Authority, and even said the order was "unneccessary" it obviously was as Southwark could not get the work done within a time frame, They also said that agreed these works 3 weeks before the order was given, which was mid July, so they have had plenty of time to start it, the fact is they only started the work after the order was given and sat around for weeks yapping about it sending out newsletter after newsletter and by the time they got around to drawing up a schedule of works they realised they could not meet the deadlne set by the LFB so they asked for an extension , perhaps now they should stop saying that the LFb are the bad guys in all this and own up to their own incompetence.
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kass | 03/10/2009 12:01 pm
I simply do not understand why with all this going on the affected residents, friends and family and neighbours have been so polite about all this after being killed and still put at risk of death. They should have no hesitation and occupied the town hall and refused to move until all these matters were urgently sorted and if not possible by the council demanded directly the Prime Minister to sort them out...
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DavidJ | 06/10/2009 3:10 pm
Kass - grow up. Occupy the Town Hall?? Refuse to move?? What on earth would that gain? And how you "can be so polite after being killed" I'm not sure!!!
At least your rants are becoming more amusing!
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Rooie Nelles | 06/10/2009 9:19 pm
I live in Marie Curie, one of the affected blocks. To be fair to Southwark, they acted very quickly in getting the work started on this block. They are about 75% of the way through replacing all external fire doors (4 per dwelling, 98 dwellings). They have installed smoke and heat alarms (directly powered ones) in most dwellings (3 per dwelling), have removed all communal ceilings and stared work on all communal doors (there are about 30 of these). Yes, the work has been disruptive and dirty, but it is to a high specification and has been progressing very quickly. They have also completed work on boxing in the areas where internal stairways cross communal corridors and making these fire resistant, installing new emergency lighting in communal areas, replacing entryphone equipment and securing electrical and gas supply piped/ducts from fire.
I accept that those in the other affected blocks must be anxious for the work to start on their homes and provide some peace of mind. As Castlemead is of almost identical design, I imagine this will be a priority.
I think therefore that the allegation that the Council have been sitting on their hands for months is unwarranted. I hasten to add, I don't work for Southwark (or any other Local Authority) and never have and am not a local politician with an axe to grind.
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Janet Yatak | 07/10/2009 7:51 pm
rooie nelles: I don't know how you can say that Southwark acted very quickly in getting the work started in Marie Curie they only did it because they were forced to by the Fire Authority they had an order on the block for breaching the fire regulations, THe block had no fire risk assessment at that time and for years you and your neighbours lives have been put at risk When they did the refurbishment at Lakanal they could have done Marie Curie as well but they did not , so please do not insult everyone's intelligence by making Southwark look like good guys, 6 of your neighbours in another block lost their lives two of them were very young and we do not yet know why and it could have well been you or your family and you would not have been defending Southwark then would you, g
,
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Janet Yatak | 07/10/2009 7:59 pm
Rooie Nelles when you say that the allegation that the council have been sitting on their hands for months is unwarranted, what about sitting on their their backsides for 3 years not doing the risk assessments that they were supposed to do under the RRO is that unwarranted also
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