Knowing the risks

Bloomsbury, London

Babington Court and Chancellor’s Court are two ordinary blocks of post-war council housing. In the small courtyard outside the two identical 14-storey buildings, young families drift past and elderly women return to homes in the blocks clutching bags of groceries. You could be on any council estate in the country, and you certainly wouldn’t think that you are right in the heart of central London – just a few minutes’ walk from Theatreland, Holborn Station and the bright lights of the West End.

Inside the block, longstanding council tenants rub shoulders with private tenants paying £3,000 a month to live in one of the most illustrious postcodes on the planet. Their lives and lifestyles vary greatly. But there is one great leveller. At some point over the last five years all of them have been at substantial risk of dying in a fire.

In the weeks following the Grenfell Tower disaster, attention rightly turned to the cladding system on the outside of the building that appears to have allowed the blaze to spread. But fire safety is about much more than what is on the outside of a building. Internal features such as fire doors, vents and escape routes can be the difference between life and death in a high-rise fire.

The public inquiry will, it is hoped, establish whether or not these features performed properly in the Grenfell blaze, but to understand where the common problems are, Inside Housing decided to look at other properties.

We asked 153 social landlords to provide their most recent fire risk assessments (FRAs), and received them from 36 councils. Housing associations, not subject to Freedom of Information laws, were less transparent with only seven providing the documents.

The 436 FRAs provided paint a worrying picture: there were fire safety problems in the majority of blocks, with 61% experiencing some issue with fire doors, a further 71 blocks with problems with emergency lighting and 109 with holes or gaps in service rooms such as electrical cupboards and drying rooms. There were also exposed pipes or cables hanging down from ceilings in 44 blocks and 54 with no ventilation or faulty ventilation in staircases to clear smoke from a fire.

In nine of the 436, the problems were so severe that the risk assessor ranked the property as posing a ‘substantial’ risk to life. Two of these were Babington and Chancellor’s Court, which like Grenfell sit awkwardly in the heart of one of London’s wealthiest areas.

The issues identified in these two buildings were manifold. Corridors and airing cupboards were used as storage rooms. Tenants smoked in the corridors, and stubbed out their cigarettes on windows, melting the uPVC frames. Many fire doors were non-compliant. Smoke alarms were damaged. Smoke vents were not fire-stopped. The list went on.

This assessment was made in 2012. When Inside Housing visited the buildings last week there were definite signs of improvement. The smoke detectors appear to have been fixed or replaced. Evacuation procedure advice appears on every floor. Notices warning residents not to leave belongings in the communal areas are everywhere – some dated as recently as 20 July.

But significant issues remain. Cigarette butts litter the windows, with a palpable tinge of tobacco smoke in the air. At least one of the doors from the drying room to the main corridor does not close by itself. And the panel doors on electricity boxes are made of tatty plywood, leaving significant gaps from the wall.

The fire risk assessment said doors should be replaced by September 2012, and many look new. But residents say they were installed last year – well, well late of the target. And there appear to be several old front doors scattered through the building.

Problems with fire doors is the most frequently raised issue in the FRAs we saw. As Hannah Mansell, technical manager at the British Woodworking Federation, says they “come up over and over again as one of the big things” in risk assessments. A particular problem with this is rooted in the Right to Buy, which has pepper-potted tower blocks with leaseholders and private landlords.

These private owners may replace doors with prettier or more security conscious alternatives that have a lower fire rating. “The problem is the council thinks they don’t have the power to change the front door [of a leaseholder],” says Ms Mansell.

However, she says a 2015 court case brought by Croydon Council has made it much easier. In what is believed to be the first case of its kind, Croydon Council took a leaseholder to court who was denying access to change her uPVC door. The council won the case, setting a precedent for other social landlords. Many landlords are not aware of this change, however, she says.

Another major, and frequent, issue flagged by the risk assessments was holes in walls and ceilings.

Improper fire doors, holes and gaps and poorly boxed in pipes all represent breaches in building’s compartmentalisation – the technical name for its ability to contain a blaze in a single flat.

As is now notorious in the aftermath of Grenfell, tenants are usually advised to stay put in their flats when a fire breaks out. This relies on the compartmentalisation functioning properly, which means finding and fixing potential breaches could not be more important.

Other frequent issues included were flammable items blocking escape routes, such as mobility scooters, and an absence of emergency lighting in stairways and other communal areas – an issue which appears to have been the case in Grenfell. Survivors have recalled the terror of being forced to feel their way in the dark down the staircase to escape with no emergency lighting to guide them.

While it is at least positive that these issues have been identified by the FRAs, there is some scepticism among experts about how useful the assessment process is.

The vast majority of FRAs we received were type 1 – the most basic form of assessment that only looks at the communal areas of a block and a sample of flat front doors. While the Local Government Association’s guidance states this will “normally be sufficient for most blocks of purpose-built flats”, experts disagree.

Ronnie King, secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Rescue and Safety, says without checking inside flats there is little point carrying out an assessment at all. “Unless assessors go into flats and the cavities and ducting then there’s no point. Fire resistance can get punctured by people fitting pipes and breaking into cavities to do other work.”

Our analysis showed the level of detail provided could vary quite substantially. Some had questions relating to issues such as the presence of combustible items in corridors and then a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ tickbox. Others had detailed comments and a risk scale. While nine graded the risk to life as substantial, 91 had no grading at all.

Part of the problem, experts say, is that the regulations are too vague. There is no requirement on who can carry out FRAs and no specific requirement on how frequently. In Babington and Chancellors Court, Camden waited five years before assessing the buildings again.

“Some of the risk assessments I’ve seen were just so basic that they simply wouldn’t do for a high rise building and are not worth the paper they are written on, not fit for purpose,” says Ms Mansell.

She adds: “The qualifications presented by fire risk assessors can be so varied. You need to have a massive wealth of knowledge to be able to properly fire risk assess a tower block and you can tell from some of the assessments that some of them don’t really have a clue.”

Since the Grenfell Tower fire a number of social landlords have switched to type 3 and type 4 fire risk assessments – the most rigorous types – as a matter of course. These assessments look inside flats, the compartmentation between flats and the means of escape.

This, perhaps, points the way forward. Inside Housing’s Never Again campaign also calls for risk assessment to be carried out annually. Social landlords, and housing associations in particular, could also do with becoming more transparent about what their assessments have found.

As the horrible reality of the last month has proved, when it comes to fire safety, the stakes are just too high not to know the risks.

Additional reporting by Pete Apps and Nathaniel Barker.