Safety review won’t cover private buildings yet
A FIRE-SAFETY probe announced by the Housing Minister will assess only local authority apartment blocks, with nonresidential and private buildings excluded from the review.
Eoghan Murphy announced the launch of a fire-safety taskforce in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London two weeks ago, in which 80 people are now believed to have died.
As part of the initiative, each local authority has been tasked with conducting inspections on all multi-storey housing units in their area.
In addition, any residential building exceeding 18 metres in height, which features cladding products similar to that used on Grenfell Tower, will also be assessed by the fire services.
However, an engineering consultant, Kevin Hollingsworth, has raised concerns about how practical it is to exclude private buildings from the probe.
He said: ‘A lot of local authority properties are in multi-unit developments that are partially private-owned. If they are in a shared development of mixed ownership, they can’t be fixed in isolation.’
Mr Murphy implied yesterday that an evaluation of private properties and nonresidential local authority buildings may yet be assessed in another phase of the safety review.
He said: ‘There is another piece of work to do to ensure that all public and private buildings are in line with fire safety and that will be the next phase of work. I’ll have an opportunity to raise that at Cabinet next week.’
Local authorities have been asked to report back by July 19 with their findings from the probe, a deadline that Mr Hollingsworth said was highly ambitious.
Dublin Chief Fire Officer Patrick Fleming called for more resources for local authorities to carry out the fire-safety checks yesterday.
The capital’s new Lord Mayor, Mícheál Mac Donncha, backed Mr Fleming’s call for more resources.
He said: ‘The Grenfell tragedy in London has again highlighted the need for absolute vigilance in fire-prevention and fire safety.’