{"id":820216,"date":"2025-01-16T05:11:37","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T11:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/fire-chief-reveals-towers-still-built-with-major-safety-risks\/"},"modified":"2025-01-16T05:11:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T11:11:37","slug":"fire-chief-reveals-towers-still-built-with-major-safety-risks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/16\/fire-chief-reveals-towers-still-built-with-major-safety-risks\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire chief reveals towers still built with major safety risks"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"London-Fire-Brigade_commissioner_Andy-Roe.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Andy Roe<\/p>\n

\n

London\u2019s fire commissioner has warned that tall buildings are still being constructed with major safety risks.<\/p>\n

Andy Roe told members of the London Assembly\u2019s Fire Committee yesterday (14 January) that a lack of skills and resources meant guidance was not always being complied with.<\/p>\n

He told the panel that an inspection conducted jointly with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR) under Gateway 3 of the regime brought in by the Building Safety Act had uncovered some major issues.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It was a] 49.85 metre residential building, designed before the London Plan came into force, and it had a single staircase, no evacuation lifts,\u201d said Roe.<\/p>\n

\u201cA 17-floor building, when we went in and looked at it… you had a sprinkler system that… did not provide water above the 11th floor, multiple different keys to operate the firefighting lift so you had to go through levels of access… a dry riser when at 50 metres you would need a wet riser… and the applicant could not provide the details of the external wall make-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was about to go into occupation. We are all grappling with layers of problems \u2013 lack of competent inspection and lack of competent skills when constructing. This is the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe said occupation was prevented on this block and described the inspection as \u201can example where we worked well with the BSR\u201d.<\/p>\n

But he added: \u201cIf that had been assessed and inspected competently at an earlier point we wouldn\u2019t have had to pick up the pieces, with a considerable amount of labour required from a limited resource.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe said fire safety should begin far earlier in the development of a building.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to see this system as an end-to-end process from the skills people bring into the environment to actually construct \u2013 so proper apprenticeships, national centres for excellence, and we welcome the community secretary\u2019s announcement that there will be regional hubs focused on construction skills \u2013 you need people who can build safely and properly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou then need at every single stage of the inspection process… competent people. There is a big question for government laid out in the second phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report around whether the construction industry and society have been best served by the privatisation of competent building inspection and what that has done to the number of local authority registered inspectors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe told the committee that of 1,329 London buildings designated for simultaneous evacuation \u2013 a type of emergency exit plan often used when stay-put orders cannot be relied on \u2013 just 179 had the controversial ACM cladding that featured on Grenfell Tower.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 696 non-ACM clad; 315 with compartmentation issues; 88 with cavity barriers missing or inappropriate; seven with structural issues; 13 with ventilation not working; three with other faults or unknown issues; and 28 kind of volunteered themselves across multiple areas of failure,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows you need competent people at the start of a construction process.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0 a statement to Construction News<\/em>, a spokesperson for the Mayor said: \u201cThe Mayor is determined to work with the government to do everything possible to ensure all Londoners have a safe home. The Mayor\u2019s London Plan and the funding conditions in his affordable housing programme incorporate country-leading fire safety standards to help ensure the safety of new homes. City Hall will work closely with the government \u2013 not only to ensure all new buildings are built to the highest safety standards, but to accelerate the remediation of unsafe homes in the capital.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Greg Pitcher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Roe London\u2019s fire commissioner has warned that tall buildings are still being constructed with major safety risks. Andy Roe told members of the London Assembly\u2019s Fire Committee yesterday (14 January) that a lack of skills and resources meant guidance was not always being complied with. He told the panel that an inspection conducted jointly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":820217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,336],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chief","category-reveals"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}