The Housing Podcast is a production of Inside Housing magazine, the UK’s leading publication for the social and affordable housing sector. Listen to find out more about the key issues in housing today, with input from the sector’s leading voices.
Can desktop studies improve fire safety?
This week’s housing podcast is dedicated to a controversial area of building regulations – desktop studies.
The process, which involves clearing combustible materials for use on high rises without testing them, has been sharply under the spotlight since Grenfell and the government has announced plans to tweak officially guidance to more specifically reference their use. But are they the correct way forward?
Or should they be banned altogether?
Our news team considers the debate, and also run down the other big housing headlines of the week. Edited by Luke Barratt
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Review of the year 2019
As the year draws to an end, The Housing Podcast team wraps up the last 12 months, battles it out in a housing quiz, and looks ahead to 2020.
What did the Grenfell Inquiry phase one report say?
This week, Sir Martin Moore-Bick published his Phase One report from the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017. The 838-page report focuses on the events of that dreadful night: how the blaze started, how it spread so ferociously through the building, and how organisations including the emergency services responded.
Sir Martin has also produced recommendations aimed at preventing similar disasters from happening again. Our team has spent the last few days picking through the report, and in this episode of The Housing Podcast, we discuss the key points.
As Boris Johnson takes over at Number 10 Downing Street and appoints his new cabinet, the Housing Podcast team present their first ever 'emergency' episode, looking at whether he is set to shift the housing policy dial back towards home ownership.
The Homes Fit for Human Habitation Act is on the statute book. But what is it for? What does it do? And will it work?
Karen Buck MP, who guided the bill through parliament, along with housing lawyers Giles Peaker and Justin Bates – who wrote it – sit down with The Housing Podcast to answer all this and more.
Theresa May scraps the cap: what does it mean?
To the delight of councils across the country, Theresa May announced this week that she will scrap the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap.
With the help of Eamon McGoldrick of the National Federation of ALMOs, in this week’s episode of The Housing Podcast we discuss the history of this contentious area of housing policy and look at what happens now.
The true cost of homelessness
Inside Housing has conducted in-depth research into the amount councils are spending on temporary accommodation for homeless people, with shocking results.
In this episode of The Housing Podcast, we take a look at the financial aspect of homelessness and discuss the figures with Matt Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis.
Rating the Social Housing Green Paper
The Housing Podcast team is joined by David Pipe from the Chartered Institute of Housing and housing columnist Jules Birch to rank the proposals in the Social Housing Green Paper out of 10. Edited by Luke Barratt.
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The supported housing saga
The government’s announcement this week that it will drop plans to change the way supported housing is funded brings to a close a nearly three-year cycle of lobbying against these proposals.
This week, The Housing Podcast looks back at this story, which began with a throwaway line in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement in 2015.
A brief history of council housing
In this week’s episode of The Housing Podcast we speak to John Boughton, social historian and author of Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing, about the five phases of local authority housing – starting in the East End of London in 1900.
Who has been the best housing minister since 2010?
The Housing Podcast team gets together to rank all the housing ministers of the modern Tory era, from Grant Shapps to Dominic Raab. There are a lot of them. Edited by Luke Barratt.
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The Hackitt Review
This week, Dame Judith Hackitt released the findings of her building regulations review, commissioned by the government in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire last June.
Featuring an interview with Dame Judith, the team takes a look at what was in the report – and why some people were less than impressed.
Building regulations say cladding systems which contain combustible insulation must be shown to meet specific standards based on “full scale test data”
A ‘desktop study’ is a means of making an assumption about whether or not a cladding system would meet these standards without actually testing it.
It involves using data from previous tests of the materials in different combinations to make assumptions about how it would perform in a test.
This is not specifically provided for in the current guide to building regulations, but the government believes they are loosely drafted to an extent which makes it permissible. It plans to redraft the guidance to include specific rules on the use of desktop studies for the first time.
The alternatives to a desktop study are full scale testing or not using combustible materials.
People are concerned about the process because it is based on assumption: at least one system cleared through a desktop study has failed a full scale test.
This is important for fire safety because mistakes may mean unsafe cladding systems being cleared for use on tall buildings.