Fire assessments find Southwark blocks lack escape routes
Risk assessments on three Southwark tower blocks have found residents have no reasonable means of escape in a fire.
London fire chiefs demanded Southwark council investigate fire hazards in Marie Curie, Castlemead and Perronet House following a fire in the 14-storey Lakanal House in July where six people died.
They served three enforcement notices on the local authority for not doing fire risk assessments under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.
Yesterday the council published the full fire risk assessments, which were carried out by independent experts.
All three blocks were found to:
- Have no suitable protection of escape routes and no compartmentation – divisions in the building which would stop the spread of fire - of a reasonable standard.
- Have an inadequate standard of housekeeping, which could include not ensuring corridors are clear of tenants belongings and rubbish
- Have no reasonable standard of emergency escape lighting systems, provision of portable fire extinguishers or suitable record of fire safety arrangements.
The Perronet House report notes: ‘In the case of two dwellings on each storey, the alternative route leads to an open lobby with a door opening directly into the main stairway.
‘The lobby is a common area, although at present there is no means of accessing it without going through a dwelling.’
Assessors found tenant belongings in the common corridors, rubbish left in chute rooms and an accumulation of rubbish in main chute bin stores.
For Marie Curie house they concluded there were ‘shortcomings in the standard of the fire separating construction forming compartments in the building’.
The assessment says work is being done to rectify this, including ‘fire stopping and repairs to the enclosing walls and ceilings of communal access corridors’.
In Castlemead a false ceiling was found on all flat entry levels and it was ‘unclear if this is fire resisting’. Wooden ceilings were ripped out of Marie Curie house shortly after the Lakanal House fire.
Other findings from Castlemead include: ‘Doors and windows to external escape balconies from the maisonettes appear to have been changed recently with UPVC replacements.
‘It is not known whether the doors are designed to provide any appreciable fire resistance, and, in any case, they are not self-closing.’ Ducts also appeared ‘in places to breach the compartmentation to communal areas’.
Southwark council said the work which was identified in the assessments has been ‘prioritised’. This includes putting in new doors with self-closing devices, replacing suspended ceilings in common corridors and putting in ‘cavity barriers’ every 10 metres.
Deputy leader and executive member for housing at Southwark council councillor Kim Humphreys said: ‘Since the tragic fire at Lakanal we have tried to respond as quickly as we can and are currently delivering a £4 million works programme to improve fire safety.
‘We are complying with everything the London Fire Brigade has asked us to do so that we can make these buildings as safe as we can. They gave us a programme for completion and we are on schedule.’
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 (7)
kass | 30/10/2009 4:37 pm
so before this findings obviously someone had found and certified these buildings as safe. It should be extremely easy to find out who they were and prosecute them for putting so many people in danger of losing their lives. Is Sothwark going to do that?
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Jim Paton | 31/10/2009 2:40 am
‘Doors and windows to external escape balconies from the maisonettes appear to have been changed recently with UPVC replacements.'
So not like Lakanal then, where Southwark spokespeople repeatedly stated after the fire that the new windows were not uPVC (or "plastic" as they usually called it) but "metal". This always seemed improbable, especially in light of the failure of the Lakanal windows. The likelihood is that they were uPVC coated windows and Southwark were systematically propagating terminological inexactitudes -aka telling us porkies.
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Janet Yatak | 31/10/2009 10:55 am
Kass, firstly, the issue is that no one did the risk assessments and therefore could not tell if they were safe or not, These issues only came to light after the fire and after the LFb gave Southwark an enforcement notice, for breaches of the RRO. meaning they left residents like this for years. As for finding out who is responsible I have tried to ask councillors who is responsible for it and asked them for somone to be held to account for the negligence and I have been warning that if I continue to make unfound allegations the council will take legal action. Not doing the risk assessments is a criminal offence and Southwark do not seem to recognise this . I have been accused of libelling someone and all I can say is thank god for the comments page of this journal and other blogs where I can exaxctly what I like.
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Joe Halewood | 02/11/2009 11:48 am
Can anybody please tell me how many properties there are in these 3 blocks?
The reason for the request is the council are spending £4m to make all these properties "as safe as they can" - note not safe but as safe as they can.
If - as the article says - they have 2 properties per storey and have 14 storeys like Lakanal then thats 28 properties per block or 84 properties. This equates to circa £48k per property. If there are 4 properties per storey then this halves to £24k per property.
That cost even at £24k per property amounts to about 4-5 years rent on each property and perhaps explains (but obviosly doesnt justify in any way) why these critical faults were allowed to go unchecked and allowed to continue.
Imagine the furore if a private landlord had left properties without "no reasonable means of escape" - then the private landlord would be in court in no time and certainly wouldnt be allowed to rectify these glaring deficiencies themself.
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Melvin Bone | 02/11/2009 1:06 pm
'kass | Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:37 GMT
so before this findings obviously someone had found and certified these buildings as safe. It should be extremely easy to find out who they were and prosecute them for putting so many people in danger of losing their lives. Is Sothwark going to do that?'
No.
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Peter | 02/11/2009 1:53 pm
Janet,
Keep asking the questions! It is highly irresponsible for the Council officers to threaten you because you have asked some awkward questions. Nevertheless, using terminology like 'unfound allegations' is their usual method to get you to back off, if they corned.
Who is responsible for the tragedy? Why are residents in the tower blocks put in harms way when Southwark Council had not complied with statutory requirement? Why are they are procrastinating? Considering the seriousness of what had happened and the problems that have been highlighted in the other blocks, questions and answers are the only way forward.
Southwark Council should have conducted its own internal investigation by now to identify and determine the failure of the process and procedures. This also should highlight whether there were failures on the part of individual/s or policy.
The findings by LFRs and enforcement notices are pretty clear cut of the existing problems and to some extent the past problems. If the money(£4M) is found to carry out the works and it is 'prioritised', why can't they tell you when the work is going to start?
Janet, what you need is peace of mind from your Landlord, whom you want to trust to do right thing and not to threaten you because you asked some awkward questions!
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Placemat | 17/11/2009 10:25 pm
The problem is who is going to pay for the works. Unless the government stumps up, the work won't be done as money doesn't grow on trees. There's no point blaming Southwark, they are no worse than any other LA, all councils have the same problem - not enough money to do what they need to.
I also don't think a private landlord would be prosecuted, the worse properties I have ever seen have been private ones and it's to get anything done about it.
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