Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
A million tower lives at risk
No sprinklers at blocks Cladding link to blazes Riddle over regulations
MORE than a million people are living in council-owned tower blocks with no sprinkler systems. Just one in eight local authorities had installed them in any of the flats in highrises, a survey two years ago found. After two fires – one at Lakanal House, South London in 2009, which killed three women and three children, and another at Shirley Towers, Southampton, where two firefighters died – coroners recommended that sprinklers should be retrofitted. But Inside Housing magazine used Freedom of Information Act requests in 2015 to discover that, out of 87 councils owning 2,925 tower blocks, only 11 local authorities had fitted sprinkler systems to flats in a total of just 18 blocks. Yesterday there were calls for an overhaul of fire-safety regulations. Sprinkler systems help by putting out small fires or by holding back larger fires to give firefighters time to tackle them.
EFFECTIVE
Paul Fuller, chief fire officer for Bedfordshire, said: “We know sprinklers are effective. Also, sprinklers will make the environment more survivable by containing the fire and smoke.” Meanwhile, there were fears that rainscreen cladding recently installed to insulate and smarten up Grenfell contributed to the fire’s rapid spread. There have been a string of fires in the UK, Dubai and China where cladding – typically plastic-based insulation board coated with an aluminium skin – was blamed for accelerating the blaze. Construction firm Rydon, which completed a major refurbishment of Grenfell Tower in 2016, insisted it “met all required building control, fire regulation and health and safety standards”. Rydon director Andrew Goldman said: “We don’t know there is any direct link between the fire and cladding. There are various different types of cladding and I don’t know the exact specifications. All the materials that we used and the procedures we put in place follow health and safety guidelines. These things are signed off by the relevant authorities to make sure they comply.” But it was unclear last night whether council building inspectors had signed off the refurbishment work. An application was made to the building control department of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in August 2014. The council website states the work was completed in July 2016. But the current status of the project is stated as: “Completed not approved.” The building control application was
lodged by Studio E Architects Ltd, which would not confirm whether or not approval had been obtained. A spokesman said: “Given the ongoing nature of the incident, it would be inappropriate for us to comment or speculate further.” Harley Curtain Wall, the cladding firm on the refurb, folded shortly after finishing a £3million segment of the £10million project. But was bought by Harley Facades, which said: “We don’t know anything about what happened and we’re trying to find out.” The rainscreen system used on Grenfell House is designed to include fire breaks at every floor and around every window to stop the spread of the flames up the building and into the flats. But a report published last year by architects Probyn-miers warned that fire spreading through cladding was “the primary issue” in a string of fires in Dubai, China and the Middle East. It warned joints between panels can fail “so that if a fire does take hold, it can race up or through an entire facade of a building”. The firm found that during the 1990s there were “at least 30 fires in the UK involving composite panels”. Mark Coles, of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said all holes for cables and pipes need to be sealed to stop fire spreading. He said: “As the building had recently undergone refurbishment, it seems likely that this may not have happened.” And Prof Ed Galea, of the University of Greenwich, said: “Unlike other cladding fires, the fire appears to have spread throughout the building.” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “We need to ask questions about what facilities and resources have been given to every local authority that has tower blocks within their area.”