Deck fire patrols have cost council £200,000

FIRE patrols at a residential development covered in flammable cladding could have already cost the local council almost £200,000.

Halton Council has been paying for a nightly ‘waking watch’ patrol at The Deck in Runcorn since the development was deemed a fire risk last October.

According to documents seen by the Weekly News, the two-man patrols cost the council around £5,600 each week and by March had already cost ‘approximately £100,000 plus’.

Halton Council was unable to say exactly how much it had spent on the waking watch for the 288 flats at The Deck, but given the number of weeks it has been in operation the cost is now likely to be in the region of £170,000 and rising.

However, the cost could have been significantly higher.

National guidance suggests that The Deck, which is made up of six different apartment blocks on the banks of the Mersey, should have a seven-man waking watch.

This would have increased the cost to £15,000 per week, but management agent Scanlans appears to have negotiated a dispensation in light of urgent works being undertaken to upgrade the fire alarm system. Once that work is complete, the waking watch can be removed but so far there is no firm date for completion.

An update provided to residents in March acknowledged that the two-man waking watch was ‘less than ideal, and falls short of the expectations contained within the national guidance’.

But the cost of the full seven-man patrols is likely to have been prohibitive as it would have meant a further huge rise in leaseholders’ service charges.

Leaseholders have already seen their bills rise 600%, largely due to a massive increase in insurance premiums, and have been charged nearly £1,000 each to pay for upgrading the fire alarms.

However, leaseholders’ fears of having to pay £30,000 each to replace the flammable cladding may not materialise after the government expanded its support for removing dangerous materials from buildings.

Applications for the government’s new £1bn Building Safety Fund, intended to help pay for the removal of the sort of cladding that covers The Deck, opened on June 1 and Scanlans has registered the development for support.

The fund is only available to buildings that are more than 18m tall, and planning documents suggest The Deck qualify by a matter of centimetres.

A decision on whether the development will receive a grant from the Building Safety Fund will be made once registration closes at the end of July.