A deadline passes sixty-nine months after Grenfell

It’s now just over sixty-nine months since the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017 caused 72 Londoners to die.

Yet not even one person has been charged or prosecuted. This despite a lengthy public inquiry that has exposed two key factors; the failure of central and local government politicians to regulate fire safety on tall residential blocks, and the complicity of developers and manufacturers to install flammable cladding on such buildings.

Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members at Grenfell, says the failure to prosecute feels like “a dagger to my heart”. But Choucair, along with tenants, residents and housing campaigners, are trying to persuade government and property developers to make sure a Grenfell fire-type tragedy does not happen again.

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Some 250,000 households across the United Kingdom are said to live in residential blocks with flammable cladding and inadequate fire safety measures. In London, in early Spring 2023, an estimated 1,185 buildings are still deemed ‘unsafe’ and require ‘simultaneous evacuation’ in the event of a sounded fire alarm. *

For example, residents in ‘East Village London E20’ live with dangerous cladding and other fire safety defects in 65 blocks in the former Olympic Village in Stratford. However, the developer was dissolved after the completion of the blocks before the 2012 Olympics. Residents do not know when their blocks will be made safe. They fear too they may face huge bills to pay for it.

March 14 2023 also saw the passing of a government deadline for developers and housebuilders to sign a legally binding contract to deal with cladding still on their buildings.

The government says 39 developers signed the contract by the deadline. Developers who had not signed contracts by the deadline are Abbey Developments, Avant, Ballymore, Dandara, Emerson Group (Jones Homes), Galliard Homes, Inland Homes, London Square, Telford Homes, and also Lendlease and Rydon Homes.

The government says failure to sign or comply with its terms means these developers will ‘face significant consequences’. Campaigners hope this means such developers will be blocked from starting new construction projects.

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Persimmon, Crest Nicholson, Bellway, and Taylor Wimpey have signed deals with the government to fix cladding revealed as unsafe after Grenfell. Other major developers have made no such promises.

The Home Builders Federation, representing developers, says government should concentrate on making cladding manufacturers accountable – and that overseas-based developers are not being made to take responsibility for their buildings.

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Meanwhile, the government’s Social Housing Bill intends to make 25,000 housing managers fix any damp homes within strict deadlines.

A coroner in 2022 concluded that two-year-old Awaab Ishak died as a result of prolonged exposure to mould in his family’s social housing flat in Rochdale.

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* ‘Simultaneous Evacuation’: All occupants are evacuated together when a fire alarm sounds.

Verified Information from sources: ITN News, ITN London, Inside Housing.

https://www.londonintelligence.co.uk/grenfell-before-the-fire/

https://paulcolemanslondon.blogspot.com/2019/06/still-no-charges-brought-two-years.html