Southwark revamp in response to fatal blaze

The local authority came in for criticism after the fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London. The blaze prompted Inside Housing to launch its Safe as Houses campaign to improve fire safety in tower blocks.

Since the fire it has emerged the council had not carried out adequate fire risk assessments on many of its tower blocks.

In the three months preceding the blaze on 3 July at Lakanal House, the authority had signed off 54 fire risk assessments on its tower blocks. In the two weeks after the blaze, it had processed 120.

The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition council decided to merge the housing and environment departments in January 2007 despite staff voting to strike over the move.

In its manifesto for the elections in May, the local authority’s Labour group pledged to split the departments into two again. It hopes to have an interim housing director in place by the end of the summer.

Ian Wingfield, Southwark’s cabinet member for housing, said: ‘Obviously in the wake of the fire what was highlighted was the necessary training and precautions in relation to fire risk assessments were not properly in place.

‘So there needs to be more effective management. I think if we had had a stand-alone department it would have got on with concentrating on housing management issues and would have been given the necessary resources and facilities to do its statutory duties. It was a manifesto commitment - we said we would do it and we are doing it.’

He said there had been requests from officers, leaseholders and tenants to separate the two departments.

Mr Wingfield said the interim director was likely to be in place for six months to ‘lay the ground’ for a strategic director to come in. It has not yet been decided whether more staff - other than the director - will be needed.

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