Still no answers

People watched in disbelief as fire spread in all directions through a south London tower block on 3 July last year.

Three women and three children on the 11th floor of Lakanal House in Southwark waited for help as smoke overwhelmed them. Tragically, that help did not reach them in time.

Their lives were remembered at an open memorial service at St Giles Church in Camberwell on Saturday, exactly one year on from the fire.

In the 12 months since the blaze ripped through the 14-storey block, the 250 residents of Lakanal House have been rehoused permanently, but they and the bereaved families of the dead are still waiting to find out why the fire caused such devastation.

Despite the passage of time, residents have as many unanswered questions now as they did on the day of the tragedy itself. Why did the fire spread so quickly and could the deaths have been prevented? Increasingly they are asking ‘how much longer will we have to wait for an answer?’.

A member of the community, who attended the service, but did not wish to be named, said people who had lost relatives in the fire lit candles for each of the victims during the service.

Reverend Nick George, who led the service, urged families not to get angry, she added. It was attended by the families of the people who died, former Lakanal House residents, fire fighters, police officers, and Harriet Harman, acting leader of the Labour Party and MP for Camberwell.

Louise Christian, solicitor for three of the families whose relatives died, said the length of time it was taking for the inquest was ‘not good enough’.

‘If there was the political will it could be done now,’ she said. ‘The bereaved families need answers.

‘It’s very traumatic. They really desperately need to know what went wrong and why the fire spread. If it has happened once it could happen again in another council block.’

But an inquest into the tragedy cannot take place until the police finish their investigation and any resulting criminal prosecutions happen. The Metropolitan Police says investigations into the fire are ongoing and expect it to be months before they conclude.

Delays

Ms Harman has been critical about the time taken to start the inquest. She backed the Safe as Houses campaign for better fire safety in social housing, which Inside Housing launched following the tragedy.

After winning the fight for a ‘super-inquest’ - where inquests into all six deaths are held together - she is calling for legal representation for Sceaux Gardens Tenants’ and Residents’ Association, which covered Lakanal House and its nearby block Marie Curie House.

Ms Harman said: ‘The relatives, Southwark Council, the fire authorities and the ambulance have all got solicitors, and rightly so, to deal with the business of asking questions of the witnesses. The only voices not represented are the tenants, and that includes the tenants that are living in Marie Curie House.’

Ian Wingfield, Southwark ward councillor for Lakanal House, believes the police involvement and any court case could take another two years, and expects the inquest process to last a further two years after that.

He is keen to bring Lakanal House back into use but thinks that could take up to five years as the council must wait until the legal process is complete.

‘From my point of view it’s a sizeable block and it would be a great gap in our overall housing stock [if it was knocked down],’ he said.

He wants the case to conclude as soon as possible to give answers to residents and the families of the dead. ‘I’m not happy with it [the length of time the investigation is taking] but we don’t want a kangaroo court.’

Safety improvements

Since the Lakanal House fire, Southwark Council has allocated £19million for four years of fire safety improvements to high-rises, such as putting in new communal doors and improving ventilation in blocks.

It has made a list of what it has found through the fire risk assessments and other more intrusive investigations of blocks, which it intends to publish on its website by the end of July. Paper copies will be available at the council offices so residents can see the fire risk assessment results and what work is being done to blocks in the borough.

It also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the London Fire Brigade, setting out the statutory duties in relation to fire safety for both organisations, which it will publish in the next few weeks. Councils, the government and the fire services have also taken a fresh look at fire safety in tower blocks in the year since the tragedy.

A request made by Inside Housing last year through the Freedom of Information Act found that councils in England frantically started checking their tower blocks after the Lakanal House fire. More than one in five local authorities stepped up fire safety work on tower blocks following the blaze. But by 18 March this year, there were still 29 tower blocks that had not been fire risk assessed.

Force for good

It was not only local authorities which were jolted into sudden action to look at the fire safety of blocks.

Fire services were also spurred on to fulfil their duty as enforcers of the fire safety order, which requires fire risk assessments to be done. Twelve of the 35 fire authorities which responded to an FOI request from Inside Housing had subjected high-rise fire risk assessments to more scrutiny since the Lakanal blaze.

Iain Cox, the Chief Fire Officers Association’s prevention and protection director, explained tower blocks were higher on fire services’ risk registers since the Lakanal fire and their risk assessments would be checked more often. The fire services are also trying to make sure the person responsible for the fire safety of their block - often the landlord - knows their design in order to produce more informative fire risk assessments.

The Tenant Services Authority says it is setting up a database of tower blocks and their fire risk assessments, as it promised to do in response to Inside Housing’s Safe as Houses campaign, but is there no date for a launch of the register.

The Communities and Local Government department has handed over information it received after asking local authorities about their tower blocks to aid creation of the database.

A CLG spokesperson suggested work on the list might slow down while a government review of the TSA is carried out. ‘Ministers have announced a review of the role and function of the TSA and the proposals for a register will be considered as part of this.

‘We are working closely with the TSA and a range of partners to strengthen the guidance to landlords and enforcement bodies concerned with fire safety in purpose-built flats.’

One year on, the bereaved families and former residents of Lakanal House are no nearer to finding out what happened on that fateful day. And the delay in holding an inquest means that they could be forced to wait another year to find out why six people died and hundreds lost their homes.

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