Dagenham fire sparks 'Grenfell 2' fears acting as a stark reminder of the ongoing building safety crisis
27 August 2024, 13:10 | Updated: 27 August 2024, 13:24
- Matt Hodges-Long is the CEO of the Building Safety Register
Bank Holiday Monday 7am and my mobile rang.
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Just two words from one of my team “Grenfell 2”
The code word used in the Building Safety world as a hypothetical for another major building fire, was being said for real.
Fires in apartment buildings happen regularly and thankfully the vast majority are resolved without injury.
Each flat is designed as a compartment that should contain a fire for long enough to allow the Fire Service to attend and extinguish the fire. Other systems vent smoke and protect escape routes.
Compartmentation works beautifully. Until it doesn’t.
In the case of Grenfell, the fire ran up, down and across the external walls due to the installation of a combustible cladding system. Compartmentation was fatally undermined.
Over 3,000 blocks across England are waiting for their combustible cladding systems to be fully removed and replaced. Dagenham was one the 3,000!
Hundreds of thousands of residents are living in apartments that are assessed to be unsafe. They are unable to sell and constantly worried about their safety.
This situation, for some, has been ongoing for 7 years. The way innocent residents are being treated is a national disgrace.
Next week the Grenfell Inquiry will publish their Phase 2 report, which will explain the detail of all the failures that led to the tragic loss of 72 lives.
Large disasters like Grenfell and Piper Alpha are rarely due to a single failure but we know the key role the cladding system played.
In response to the Grenfell tragedy, the Government appointed Dame Judith Hackitt to conduct a fast track review of High Rise Building Safety and in May 2018 her ‘Building a Safer Future’ report was published.
Hackitt called for root and branch reform of the construction and management of high rise buildings and the establishment of a new regulator.
Hackitts views were informed by the safety management approach in ‘high hazard’ environments like chemical plants and oil rigs.
Her recommendations ultimately became the Building Safety Act which became law in October 2023 (6 years after Grenfell)
Industry experts are still struggling to operationalise and fund the implementation of the Building Safety Act across 13,000 high rise buildings (of which Dagenham was one) due to the legal complexities, volume of buildings and lack of detailed guidance.
The new Building Safety Regulator has been established by the Health and Safety Executive but shows little sign of regulating building safety effectively.
At the time of writing the regulator has not commented publicly on the Dagenham fire or how it intends to investigate.
In the seven years since Grenfell. I have tried to do everything I can to stop history repeating itself.
I have called for a simpler regulatory regime, stronger enforcement, faster remediation funding, compensation for victims, shared IT systems and clearer guidance.
I have written numerous letters, attended Parliament, submitted FOI requests, blogged, tweeted, built software and appeared on countless media outlets to champion the building safety cause.
Despite all of this activity (and similar by so many industry colleagues) the senior civil servants at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government remain elusive, aloof and in many cases totally disinterested in human suffering.
I regularly ask Ministers, Civil Servants and Regulators questions along the lines of:
‘how do we do that 13,000 times within 6 months?’
‘how much will it cost and who is going to pay?’
‘could we discuss a simpler way of achieving the same outcome?’
‘will this actually make residents safer?’
Rarely do I receive a reply and if I do it’s quite often gibberish. In short they know best.
Until our Government starts treating the Building Safety Crisis as a Crisis and genuinely work night and day to make residents safe in their homes, there is nothing to stop Grenfell's 3,4,5…
