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Barking fire: council will go to court if prevented from accessing damaged blocks

Barking & Dagenham Council has threatened the owner of the development ravaged by fire in June with court action if it is blocked from gaining access to the buildings to carry out health and safety assessments.

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The aftermath of the fire in Barking (picture: Nathaniel Barker)
The aftermath of the fire in Barking (picture: Nathaniel Barker)
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Barking fire: council will go to court if blocked from accessing damaged blocks #ukhousing

Barking and Dagenham Council has threatened the owner of the block where the devastating Barking fire took place with court #ukhousing

In a statement to Inside Housing, a spokesperson for the council said that it has now appointed an independent assessor to begin a housing health and safety rating system (HHSRS) inspection on 21 August, which will assess whether there are any hazards and if it is safe for residents to return.

The spokesperson said: “We are now liaising with the building owners’ solicitors to gain the entry required and will have no hesitation in going to court to obtain warrants if we face any obstructions.”

In June a fire ripped through the Samuel Garside House at the Barking Riverside development, which caused damage to 57 flats in the complex. Since then, residents have been put up in temporary accommodation across east London.

However, there have been a litany of issues with regards to the residents’ return to the development, with many describing the “stress” they have felt by the building managers’ attempts to get them to return despite significant safety fears.


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Samuel Garside House is owned by Adriatic Land, which is part of the £1.6bn Long Harbour Ground Rent Fund, it bought the head lease for the property from Bellway. The building’s manager is Adriatic Land’s subsidiary HomeGround, which employs Places for People’s subsidiary RMG to manage the block’s day-to-day management.

As part of the Barking & Dagenham Council’s plan to ensure that residents feel the flats are safe before they move in, the council has decided to appoint an independent HHSRS inspector to examine the property and assess whether there are any hazards within the development.

A HHSRS will allow the inspector to look for 29 different hazards, including fire safety hazards, water issues and electrical safety.

If it is deemed dangerous, a council is able to take a number of steps such as taking enforcement action against the building owner, including serve building owners with improvement notices or, in the worst-case scenario, a prohibition or demolition order.

In response to these comments from the council, a HomeGround and RMG spokesperson said that the companies had been “entirely collaborative” with the council at every stage of the process following the fire.

They added: “[We] will continue to support them with any information, documentation or access that they require as part of their investigations.”

Inside Housing reported in June that a Type 1 fire risk assessment carried out on Samuel Garside House in January, five months before the fire, had identified the wooden balcony cladding as a significant hazard that puts residents at risk.

A Type 4 fire risk assessment, the most in-depth type of assessment, has since been commissioned for the Samuel Garside development after the fire. However, Inside Housing revealed that the Type 4 assessment had only begun on blocks C and D, the worst hit by the fire, last week.

The spokesperson for HomeGround and RMG said that it appreciated that some residents still had concerns around the safety of the properties but had offered each resident a one-to-one inspection and walk-through with the appropriate experts.

They added that they were pleased that the insurers had extended the cover for emergency had been extended until 2 September.

The Barking & Dagenham Council spokesperson said that while the extension was “in some ways positive” it hadn’t solved the problem of residents not feeling safe and “firm action” from the building owners, developers and managing agents need to happen to give them that confidence.

They added: “Residents’ trust in these companies is at an all-time low, which is why they are coming to us to intervene but our power only extends so far.”

 

Update 11:13 15/08/2019 On Thursday Barking and Dagenham Council provided an update to Inside Housing on the situation and said that it had been liaising with Adriatic and HomeGround and they were cooperating and no court action was now envisaged.

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