Ministers ‘dragged feet over reforms’

MINISTERS repeatedly stonewalled attempts to improve the safety of tower blocks, a former fire chief claimed yesterday.

Ronnie King, who spent 41 years in the fire service and now advises MPs, said it took a tragedy for them to prioritise saving lives over saving money.

‘They seem to need a disaster to change regulations, rather than evidence and experience,’ said Mr King, who is honorary secretary of the allparty parliamentary fire safety and rescue group.

‘It was the same with the King’s Cross fire [in 1987] and the Bradford City football club fire [in 1985]. They always seem to need a significant loss of life before things are changed.’

He said that Gavin Barwell – Theresa May’s new chief of staff – had ‘no sense of urgency’ when, as housing minister, he was chased about reforms recommended after the last high-rise fire, at Lakanal House in South London. It was the same with Mr Barwell’s predecessor James Wharton, he added.

New rules to prevent cladding fires have supposedly been in the pipeline for 18 years. Following a blaze at a tower block in Ayrshire, which killed an elderly man, the Commons regional affairs committee concluded that external cladding systems ought to be ‘entirely non-combustible’.

However this has still not come into effect, with the rules stating ‘limited combustibility’ as the threshold.

Concerns grew again in July 2009, when six people died and 20 were injured in the Lakanal House fire. The inquest, which ended in 2013, heard the blaze spread within five minutes, burning through external panels attached to the building’s facade during a refurbishment.