It is necessary but hugely difficult to provide low rent
social housing in such a wealthy area. Low wage workers are needed locally who
can’t afford to travel far to work. There’s a huge lobby behind ‘green’ energy
efficient buildings so cladding heat-leaking concrete buildings is a
no-brainer. The lower cost cladding though more flammable has been used widely
without catastrophic results. The tenants know far less about buildings and
building regulations than our own in-house departments and external
contractors. Their scare mongering is from a small number of electrical surges
due to the water supply pumps but everything has passed the relevant
regulations. Then the unforeseen happens. The original fire-safe building
worked by each flat being a concrete walled fire-containing unit, a fire in one
could not travel outside it, hence no need for a sprinkler system and the fire
service instruction to stay put. They can only reach ten stories from the
outside so they must gain access to the upper floors internally to deal with a
fire there. Similarly though windows blow out in a single flat fire this would
not normally breach the fire containment built into the building. But the
cladding did. A fire in one flat popped the window and set fire to the
cladding, which popped the window in the flat above and set fire to it, the
next and the next: A terrible catastrophe that has caused huge anger at a rich
uncaring landlord and sympathy for the poor perished tenants. One mistake
caused by a change in building philosophy over time. Individually both are
valid and safe, but mixed they’re not. There are occurrences that individually
or collectively bring us to our senses and break some complacent dream. It’s
never easy but it’s in the learning not emotion that we make progress.
