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London councils enhance fire risk assessments

London councils are carrying out “more intrusive” fire risk assessments (FRAs) in response to the Grenfell Tower fire.

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London councils enhance fire risk assessments

Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster, Southwark and Lambeth councils have told Inside Housing they are going beyond government guidance to make more thorough assessments of all their tower blocks following the disaster a month ago, in which at least 80 people were killed.

Their previous FRAs only examined communal areas, but they are now inspecting the interiors of flats as well, in what are called Type 3 and Type 4 FRAs.

Barking and Dagenham Council said it was considering doing the same.

Government guidance requires landlords to carry out Type 1 FRAs – non-destructive surveys of communal areas, and experts are divided over what circumstances make intrusive assessments necessary.


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Southwark Council has been making occasional Type 4 assessments since the 2009 Lakanal House fire, but is now carrying out Type 4s on all its tower blocks.

After the Lakanal fire, the coroner recommended that fire risk assessments be expanded to inspect flats that have been modified internally, and a sample of unmodified flats to ensure that a fire would be contained within a flat.

Arnold Tarling, chartered surveyor at Hindwoods, told Inside Housing that councils and housing associations should be looking at Type 3s and 4s.

Mr Tarling, who said he refuses to carry out Type 1 assessments, commented: “You can’t see the other side of the wall. The fire brigade are only interested in what’s on the corridor side of the wall. When I’m telling them that there are power sockets in the wall which are not fire rated, they’re not interested.

“[The government] should say that the fire brigade has to look inside flats, or a selection of them.”

John Ovell, a fire safety consultant to housing associations, said Type 4 assessments should be more standard.

He told Inside Housing: “A Type 1 is just visual, to see if you can see something wrong with the flat. If you’re inside a block of flats, if you see something wrong with the front door, you report that. But you can’t tell what the fire stopping’s like if, say, a new kitchen’s been installed or something like that.”

Some experts, however, suggested that Type 3s and 4s were only necessary if a landlord had a specific reason to think that the compartmentalisation of flats had been compromised.

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