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Hundreds of London tower blocks without recent fire risk assessments
Eight London councils have admitted not checking a total of 342 tower blocks for fire safety in more than a year, with some not having been checked in more than three years.
Croydon, Greenwich, Havering, Newham, Southwark, Islington and Redbridge councils revealed that buildings over six storeys were without a fire risk assessment for at least the past 12 months. Havering Council had not checked any of its 14 tower blocks in more than two years.
The research comes a month after Southwark Council was prosecuted by the London Fire Brigade for failings in the build-up to the Lakanal House fire in 2009, which killed six people.
One of the failures Southwark pleaded guilty to was a failure to carry out a proper risk assessment.
Last week, Inside Housing revealed flammable panels attached to the outside of a tower block in Hammersmith & Fulham allowed a fire to spread across five floors of the building.
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A spokesperson for Havering Council said: “We are in the process of starting our risk assessment process for 2017 – this should start by June.”
In some cases, blocks have not even been checked in more than three years. A 24-storey block on Butchers Road in Newham, for example, last received a fire risk assessment in February 2014.
The building is on the same road where the infamous tower block Ronan Point once stood. That block, which was 22 storeys high, partially collapsed in 1968 after a gas explosion, killing three people.
There is no legal requirement for fire risk assessments to be carried out within a particular timescale but it is recognised best practice to review the assessments on an annual basis.
Southwark Council, which manages 317 tower blocks, has checked 62% of them in the past year. But 121 blocks have not been checked for more than 12 months, including a building less than 400 feet from Lakanal House.
Hannah Mansell, fire safety expert at the British Woodwork Federation, told Inside Housing: “It’s very worrying. The fire risk assessment is an ongoing live document, and it has to be reviewed regularly to identify new or heightened risks in a building.
“If an assessment is not carried out on a regular basis on a high-risk building, how does anyone really know if they are playing with fire and the lives of those in their care?”
