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Fire safety work remains essential – even in the new reality
As Inside Housing reveals the worrying scale and cost of waking watches, fire safety work must continue, despite the coronavirus lockdown, writes Peter Apps
The past fortnight has seen the country adjusting to the new reality. At the heart of this adaptation is a simple question: what must we stop doing and what must carry on?
This is the question the government is trying to work out for the entire UK economy, but it is also one that must be grappled with by individual businesses. Housing providers are no different. Where is the line between an essential service that must continue and a non-urgent one that must now be put on hold?
It is a grave and difficult decision – continuing to send staff out exposes them, and all the people they will come into contact with, to the risk of infection. It must be tempting to bring everything to a halt.
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But the truth is that work needs to be done, lockdown or no lockdown. Guidance published this week suggested that with due care leaky roofs, broken boilers and faulty plumbing must still be fixed, among other issues which are necessary to provide residents with a safe and warm home to isolate in.
This is surely right – and the frontline workers who provide the services deserve their place in the national acknowledgement of key workers who continue to place themselves at risk to keep the country functioning.
There is another category of works which cannot be halted, though: fire safety.
As Inside Housing reports this week, some 420 buildings around the country are protected by waking watch services. As residents spend more time at home, the risk of fire increases and a fire in one of these buildings means a risk of devastation. They must continue to receive the protection they need.
But waking watch services are not supposed to be a permanent fix. It comes with risk (everyone may not be successfully evacuated) and an unacceptable financial cost (borne by the sector and private leaseholders).
The only way to make buildings safe in the short term is a comprehensive and appropriate alarm system – possibly backed by active prevention methods, such as sprinklers. And the only way to make them safe in the long term is to remedy the flaws that required the waking watch to be introduced. Both activities constitute essential work which must continue throughout the lockdown as far as possible.
Our research shows that fire services have attended 300 fires in these buildings since Grenfell. Over the coming months this number will likely increase. We are running out of lives. The work to make buildings safe was always essential and, even in the new reality we find ourselves in, nothing has changed.
Peter Apps, deputy editor, Inside Housing
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