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Association downgraded for fire safety was given four more tower block enforcement notices
A Merseyside housing association deemed non-compliant by the regulator for fire safety failings has been handed a further four tower block enforcement notices.
Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT), which owns around 13,000 homes, was the first landlord to be censured by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) on fire safety grounds since the Grenfell Tower disaster last June.
It was downgraded to ‘G3’ for governance on 1 August, indicating “issues of serious regulatory concern”.
The regulator began an investigation into KHT after Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service (MFRS) handed it three enforcement notices for tower blocks on the Quarry Green Estate in Kirkby in November 2017, which have now been lifted.
KHT has confirmed to Inside Housing that it was issued four further enforcement notices for the nearby estate of Gaywood Green on 20 July, shortly before the regulator published its judgement and on the same day the association’s grading was placed under review.
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A spokesperson for the association said: “The notices were issued following KHT informing MFRS of the recommendations raised within the recently completed annual fire risk assessments.”
The safety concerns related to issues with compartmentation, KHT added. It said it reported receiving the notices to the RSH.
Round-the-clock patrols have been introduced at the four blocks and the ‘stay put’ policy has been replaced with an evacuation strategy while the enforcement notices are in place.
The association has started carrying out Type 3 FRAs on its high rises after being served the enforcement notices for Quarry Green – which are more thorough than the Type 1 assessments previously used.
The Gaywood Green tower blocks were the first Type 3 assessments returned to KHT.
Tony Cahill, executive director of KHT, said: “As soon as we received those enforcement notices we contacted [MFRS] and said can we meet you on site and read through the findings, and tell you about our proposals about the mitigating measures we put in place while we’re doing some compartmentation work.
“And they came along, and they said they were happy with the work we were doing, they were happy with the mitigating measures, but they were going to issue us an enforcement notice for each block to make sure that the work was done in a timely manner.”
Click here to read our full investigation into the problems at KHT
