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xyz, says Emma Maier

 

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Six months after the worst fire in social housing history, it is incumbent on everyone to take stock. To consider progress made since the Grenfell fire and the mountain yet to climb. To hold a mirror up and ask whether everything possible is being done.

For survivors, progress has been painfully slow; inadequate. There are 123 households from Grenfell and the surrounding walkways still in temporary accommodation; mainly hotels. The causes are numerous: a lack of preparedness, scarcity of social housing in the surrounding area, and complete lack of awareness on the part of government, which made objectively unrealistic promises to rehouse people in days. For survivors, Christmas and the seasonal break will not offer respite or the security of home. It will serve as another painful reminder.

Progress on the wider work to ensure that such a dreadful tragedy does not happen again has been mixed. Inside Housing research with landlords with towers reveals extensive programmes of remedial work across the country. Half of UK towers are in line for sprinklers, or the move is under consideration (a key strand of our Never Again campaign). Dangerous cladding has been removed from at least 75 blocks, and landlords are undertaking a raft of other safety measures. The cost for the two thirds of blocks covered by our research comes in at at least £500m. Progress is in spite of government turning down council requests for financial help and refusing to fund sprinklers.

However, there is much more for landlords to do. Our research suggests that 53% of towers have not had a fresh fire risk assessment since Grenfell, and 31% have assessments that are more than a year old. While councils are increasingly complying with the Information Commissioner’s instruction to publish assessments for tenants, house associations lag woefully.

Since Grenfell, government has professed its commitment to social housing. If it is serious, it should be investing in quality and safety as well as quantity. Arguably, it is doing neither – the total costs of remedial work footed by landlords are likely to creep ever closer to the much vaunted extra “£2bn boost for social housing” announced in October.

From a safety point of view, ministers also need to look beyond the social sector. In public government has attempted to confine the issue of fire safety to social housing. At the National Housing Federation conference, Sajid Javid even implied that such a fire could not have happened in the private rented sector.

Privately, however, ministers are aware of the risks beyond social housing – in the PRS, student housing, low-rise supported housing, and hospitals and schools. Three months after the fire, government ordered councils to compile records on PRS blocks. Our research confirms that progress is slow with huge information gaps remaining. But even more worryingly, that PRS could in fact be more risky than social housing: the London Fire Brigade has issued 87 enforcement notices on privately owned blocks against 62 on social towers.

Perhaps this explains government’s focus on social housing. It has few, if any, levers to pull to resolve the PRS issues.

Yet PRS safety – and the implication that the increase in enforcement notices is in part down to the fire services taking a more rigorous approach – support the already abundant evidence that this is a system-wide failure that requires a full systems review.

There is a great deal further to go to keep tenants safe in future. No-one can afford to take their eye off the ball. Never again.

Emma Maier, editor, Inside Housing

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