It's already political. You cage the poorest in towerblocks and then abandon them economically. These are decisions made by politicians who hate the working class.Well that's another own goal for her not that this should get political , yet..
It's already political. You cage the poorest in towerblocks and then abandon them economically. These are decisions made by politicians who hate the working class.Well that's another own goal for her not that this should get political , yet..
And speaking of cunts, latest press release from KCTMO
KCTMO said:our core priority at the moment is our residents
all roads lead to number 10 it seems
investigative journalism at its finestYou can tell how much of this is likely to be laid at their door by the way that Guido is covering today's news - which is of course dominated by the shock finding that Clement Attlee got more of the vote and more seats than Corbyn.
Cab you copy and paste the contents?
From the Indy article above it seemed that the refurbishment was about asthetics for neighbouring private blocks and not about what the Grenfell residents wanted or were raising concerns about for years
Cab you copy and paste the contents?
This seems to be the only comment so far:Cab you copy and paste the contents?
If one was cynical I guess one might consider that technically all those hundreds - HUNDREDS - of people just burned out of their homes are no longer really residents, and so not the priority of KCTMO
Cab you copy and paste the contents?
Ministers failed to act on the clear lessons of the 2009 Lakanal House fire according to high-rise fire safety expert Sam Webb
The tragic fire at Grenfell Tower could and should have been prevented thanks to the lessons of a similar disaster in the capital eight years’ ago, a leading fire expert has told the AJ.
Sam Webb, a retired architect who investigated the fatal 2009 Lakanal House fire in Southwark and acted as an expert witness to the families affected at the inquest, said that Lakanal House also featured cladding which caught fire (pictured below).
That fire claimed six lives including three children and was previously the UK’s worst fire in a postwar block of flats.
Webb, who sits on the Parliamentary All Party Fire & Rescue Group and also investigated the infamous 1968 Ronan Point tower collapse, said that cladding panels underneath windows at Lakanal House had caught fire within four-and-a-half minutes.
Of Grenfell Tower, he said: ‘This tragedy was entirely predictable, sadly.
‘What we saw at Lakanal House should have been enough to make people think about what was going on with the outside of our buildings in terms of cladding.’
Webb also questioned why the government had not updated Part B of the Building Regulations covering fire risk in tall buildings and why sprinkler systems had been made mandatory in new build towers but not in refurbished ones.
Ministers failed to act on the clear lessons of the 2009 Lakanal House fire according to high-rise fire safety expert Sam Webb
The tragic fire at Grenfell Tower could and should have been prevented thanks to the lessons of a similar disaster in the capital eight years’ ago, a leading fire expert has told the AJ.
Sam Webb, a retired architect who investigated the fatal 2009 Lakanal House fire in Southwark and acted as an expert witness to the families affected at the inquest, said that Lakanal House also featured cladding which caught fire (pictured below).
That fire claimed six lives including three children and was previously the UK’s worst fire in a postwar block of flats.
Webb, who sits on the Parliamentary All Party Fire & Rescue Group and also investigated the infamous 1968 Ronan Point tower collapse, said that cladding panels underneath windows at Lakanal House had caught fire within four-and-a-half minutes.
Of Grenfell Tower, he said: ‘This tragedy was entirely predictable, sadly.
‘What we saw at Lakanal House should have been enough to make people think about what was going on with the outside of our buildings in terms of cladding.’
Webb also questioned why the government had not updated Part B of the Building Regulations covering fire risk in tall buildings and why sprinkler systems had been made mandatory in new build towers but not in refurbished ones.
Lakanal House fire
zoom inzoom out
‘We [the All Party Group] have been trying to get ministers to make sure we have sprinkler systems on refurbished as well as new towers but this has fallen on deaf ears,’ he said. ‘We provide people with water in their homes, why can’t we provide sprinkler systems – it’s not rocket science.
‘Ron Dobson, the then chief fire officer of the London Fire Brigade, concluded at the end of the Lakanal House inquest that these would have saved those who died.
Last autumn, then housing minister Gavin Barwell - who lost his seat at the general election and was this week appointed as Theresa May’s new chief of staff - announced a review into Part B of the Building Regulations 2010.
However, the review has not yet begun and in March, a spokesperson for the DCLG said the review would be undertaken ‘in due course’.
In 2009, a BBC London investigation found that hundreds of tower blocks across London had not been properly assessed for fire safety.
Using FOI, the investigation found that councils had failed to fire check at least 253 social housing high-rises – something that constitutes a criminal offence.
Lambeth Council has only carried out risk assessments on two of its 112 tower blocks while Southwark, the local authority in charge of Lakanal House, where six people died in a fire that year, refused to answer the FOI request.
Requests sent to 32 boroughs showed at least eight councils had failed to make proper checks.
Comments
Hannah Mansell, chair of the Passive Fire Protection Forum, trustee of the Children’s Burns Trust and spokesperson for the BWF’s Fire Door Safety Week campaign
We have a right to be very angry at the news about Grenfell Tower. I regularly sit in meetings with fire safety professionals, and their fury and frustration at the inaction of local councils and social landlords is palpable.
We have been warning about the risks of a fire like this for years. ‘What we need to get people to take notice is a huge fire in a tower block’ they say. Well, here it is.
’There’s an endemic fire safety problem in this type of housing stock’
There is an endemic fire safety problem in this type of housing stock. I have walked around tower blocks documenting and filming the fire safety breaches. I’ve seen flats without fire doors, no emergency lighting or signage on fire doors and escape routes, broken fire rated glass, wedged-open fire doors, poor fire stopping around service hatches that breach compartmentation, no smoke seals in fire doors, rubbish and combustible material left in the common areas, and no information displayed on the specific fire plan of the building.
But that information appears to fall on deaf ears. Action must be taken now to address these issues.
I think updating the look of the building is of benefit to everyone in the area, especially the residents. If you're trying to get planning permission you reach out to people likely to complain by telling them it will improve the area.
This is exactly what I've seen actually happened from people on Twitter.A positive thought just occurred to me: because it's Ramadan, the Muslim residents of the block are more likely to have been awake at the time the fire started. They're more likely to have been able to get out and warn their neighbours to get out.
Fucking hell, this is going to be massive. Again, sorry, both should and shouldn't be thinking things like that today. Fucking hell.It obviously says this in Indy article, but this more from residents point of view. I've seen another resident on the tv that was pretty irate about it too.
"The tower block had been fitted with external plastic cladding last year costing £10million. Residents said the panels were fitted to make the block more aesthetically pleasing for residents of luxury developments nearby, while lifts in neighbouring blocks had been left broken for years despite costing approximately £60,000 to repair."
Council blamed over tower blaze deaths
It obviously says this in Indy article, but this more from residents point of view. I've seen another resident on the tv that was pretty irate about it too.
"The tower block had been fitted with external plastic cladding last year costing £10million. Residents said the panels were fitted to make the block more aesthetically pleasing for residents of luxury developments nearby, while lifts in neighbouring blocks had been left broken for years despite costing approximately £60,000 to repair."
Council blamed over tower blaze deaths
The kindness needs to be available, but not imposed.equally they should not be smothered with kindness. they'll need some space to come to terms with what has happened.
If one was cynical I guess one might consider that technically all those hundreds - HUNDREDS - of people just burned out of their homes are no longer really residents, and so not the priority of KCTMO
This feels more visceral and immediate - like the poll tax. This is coming down on everyone. How can london live like this any longer?Bang on. Hopefully it won't take the guts of thirty years to get justice, though.
Fair dos I was more just sharing because they didn't seem to think it was to their benefit and were complaining that they hadn't been respected and listened to when carrying out the project.These are slightly different issues. You can't upgrade the insulation of a block of flats without putting a new skin on the building. Unless of course you do it inside and make everyone's rooms smaller which is unpopular.
Clearly the on-going maintenance is going to be a massive issue but there are all sorts of grants available from the government, the mayor and the energy providers for projects which include insulating a building. Councils and social housing providers are obliged to have a strategy to improve all of their housing stock. Its obviously easier for them to do blocks of flats and do 40 odd homes in one hit then individual houses.
So in short the money would have come from a different pot then the maintenance which is why the residents have ended up with a new cladding system they didn't see the benefit of and lifts that don't work.
And I hadn't read that when I postedSorry but I don't think that's what happened. The building has been upgraded in several respects including increasing the number of flats by remodeling the lower floors. The facade system was a combination of increasing the thermal performance (lower bills for residents) and improving the look of the building which should benefit all. I don't believe they would just spend 10 million to tart it up a bit there has been more work done on it then that.
Whether the residents were consulted in the process I don't know but it would be unusual if they were not. I've personally been to quite a few resident liaison meetings for similar projects where the plans are on show and the feedback from residents is sought.
That must be fucking awful - it's one thing to see the comparatively sanitised reporting on the telly, but to actually see & hear people screaming for their lives as the fire reaches them... Makes me shudder just to imagine it...People who live nearby and had to watch helpless and hear the screams there will be a lot of people traumatised by this . My friend on Latimer Rd says everything in her place has the smell of smoke in it and ash in the air everywhere still
Well-wishers have raised more than £250,000 for victims of the Grenfell Tower inferno just hours after flames ripped through the building.
More than 10,000 people have donated to four verified fundraising pages set up to help hundreds of families affected by the devastating fire that gutted the 24-storey social housing block on Wednesday morning.
More than £250,000 raised for victims in hours after devastating fire
Tri-borough shared services - WikipediaAn interviewee on Radio 4 just described a separate incident in Hammersmith - a neighbouring Tory-run borough that has a shared administration with Kensington and another local authority. I didn't follow the full story, but it involved a fire report that identified a certain design of window as a hazard not being published. It was only released through a Freedom of Information request. The interviewee couldn't see any legitimate reason for not making this information more widely available.
This is what a bonfire of red tape looks like.