London Fire: Grenfell Tower thread five

[RhythmAndStealth]

RIP

Five victims officially named
At least 79 victims expected, possibly more
Many displaced and struggling

To all those affected and all those helping

Thread four
Thread three
Thread three contains links to threads one and two.

Politicians for 2 or 3 decades have been asleep at the wheel on so many things. As regards rules & regulations, on the one side, they're trying to water down due to accusations of "red tape" and bureacracy etc, on the other, they're forever bringing in new laws and changing existing laws. What they're failing to do is tidy up the laws, i.e. they bring in new layers of rules & laws without getting rid of old, superceded ones, and without considering their interaction with other laws. In my profession, accountancy, I see it daily - I despair at each yearly Budget when things are changed yet again - another layer of change on an already creaky system. What we need is BETTER legislation, not more, not less! New laws need to be properly scrutinised - not just nodded through Parliament under the whip by people who havn't a clue what they're voting for! Hopefully this tragedy will highlight the incompetence of our politicians, parliament etc and cause a sea-change in the whole process of laws, rules and regulations.

What it's really like to live in Social Housing in the middle of a luxury development

www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/james-obrien-social-tenants-luxury-flats/

To be fair Bad HMRC is horrendously understaffed and underresourced. They do their best.

And with all the rewrites to old tax laws, the government really has been trying - for years, behind the scenes - to make the whole system cleaner and easier. Takes forever though, as admin always does. The main problem with the system was the lack of a GAAR but hopefully at some point HMRC will find the teeth to use their GAAR powers properly and the judiciary will back them up.

Not bloody likely though because the top of HMRC and judiciary are just as bloated rich dodgy fuckers as those at the top of business and accounting. Says this cynical ex tax professional

I have a question about flammable cladding.
A lot of new eco-friendly buildings are clad in wood.
Is this not flammable?

High rises are clad in wood?

The standards and materials used for high rises and low rises should be different, Batteries. This is because both the risks and consequences of a fire spreading are very different.

And wool is flame resistant (I don't know if it is fire resistant enough to be appropriate for high rise insulation though - probably not.)
That's why soft furnishings etc made out of wool based products are safer than many furnishings made from synthetic fibres.
www.iwto.org/flame-resistance

Sorry I directed the above post to Batteries when I meant TheCountess

The changes are working actually. Lots of new London expensive housing won't seel (stamp duty to high, ATED to pay every year etc etc). So foreign buyers are sticking to flats worth under £500k in Manchester (as that is under the ATE limit and stamp duty is much less). So that shows that state interference has an impact.

Mind you making lower priced properties unaffordable was hardly supposedt o be the aim. The fact properties £1m+ won't sell hardly helps those buying at the bottom end. My son's house cost £325k. It is people at the £100k to £300k end who have found it hard to buy . However we now have 300 lenders even after Help to Buy is over who now offer 95% mortgage which realy does help those who could not save up a 10% deposit but could manage 5% particularly couple both working full time before babies.

Not sure what the relevance of wool is either Squishy?

My understanding was that only single dwellings are clad in wood but I am happy to stand corrected on that.

A single dwelling completely burning down doesn't pose the same risk to life as a multiple dwelling building. Also a large single dwelling will have more exit points (windows on the other side of the building for example) than a multiple dwelling building, particularly a high rise with only one central staircase.

Not high rises but buildings with more than just a couple of stories, and including buildings like hospitals that would be hard to evacuate and thus use the same 'stay put' policy as high rises.

Squishy, wood, ie timber, not wool.
Wool is indeed great stuff for not burning. When fashions changed from wool to cotton the number of women burned to death in kitchen fires increased hugely - I imagine it is among one of the better insulating materials, compared to anything plastic-based.

I was wondering if the timber cladding we see a lot of now is treated in some way or if we should be worried about it as well.

Gahhhh..... I misread "wood" as "wool". Twice.
I am so sorry.
Did not mean to confuse/derail the thread, honestly. Just need to get my eyes tested.

I should imagine the ability to use flammable materials is linked to the number and accessibility of exit points. I would think hospitals have lots of exit routes. Just speculation though.

My understanding was that only single dwellings are clad in wood but I am happy to stand corrected on that.

I don't think that's right. About 30 metres from here there's a large set of interconnected blocks, 4 storeys high, private residential flats, clad partly in wood.

That makes sense, Batteries.
A lot of new student accommodation near me is up to 6 stories and timber clad but there would be many more exit points (and the standards for fire alarms are so, so much better than they appear to be for tower blocks).

Sorry for derail.

Also I think the problem with this cladding was specific to it being a concrete constructed block. The flats were designed to be able to burn to a crisp inside without others catching fire due to the concrete construction. Hence the 'stay put' rule. Because the theory was that there was more risk from mass evacuation (crushing in stairwell I guess?) than from the fire.

The cladding being flammable circumnavigated the concrete construction and caused the fire to spread.

In many new builds, there wouldn't be the same method of construction, and instead there would be a reliance on central fire alarms / fire systems and multiple exit routes, to allow for an orderly and timely evacuation.

Yes to clarify the 600 buildings are tower blocks, libraries, schools and other public buildings.

There are 4000 tower blocks (not sure what constitutes a tower block, presumably it's a certain number of floors and above) in the UK but that's a mixture of old and new and probably the largest concentration in London. As Harriet Harman said, she has 50+ in her constituency alone.

Update from Camden Council, on one of their new tower blocks. They commissioned fireproof cladding, but tests have revealed the cladding fitted was not fireproof.

^The arrangement of the cladding and insulation used on Camden Council’s buildings significantly differs from that on Grenfell Tower. It includes fire-resistant rock wool insulation designed to prevent the spread of fire....

The new results from the laboratory show that the outer cladding panels themselves are made up of aluminium panels with a polyethylene core.

Therefore the panels that were fitted were not to the standard that we had commissioned. In light of this, we will be informing the contractor that we will be taking urgent legal advice.^

This is the same contractor and subcontractor that fitted the cladding on Grenfell Tower.

news.camden.gov.uk/camden-set-to-remove-cladding-from-chalcots-estate-tower-blocks/

Peter Apps‏*@PeteApps*
Huge, breaking: Camden says fire proof cladding commissioned but NON-fire proof was fitted, tests show

We used to live in a modern construction, wood clad block of flats. It had a central fire alarm (pain in the neck when someone burned their toast) and a sprinkler system in each flat and communal areas. There was no stay put rule - you had to evacuate each time the alarm went off.

Our block wasnt as big as Grenfell though and I'm not sure that a central alarm system would be a good idea in a big block. After dozens of false alarms i think people would stop responding.

Now, if the contractor was contracted to install a fire-resistant cladding and chose instead to install a non-fire-resistant cladding I have no problem with those responsible for that decision being dragged into court and then possibly going to prison.

I still can't imagine in what universe any architect thought it was a good idea to build such a tall block with only one escape route. I've heard the reasons etc but it still seems so glaringly stupid to me.

And wow. That update from Camden Council is huge

I thought the metal cladding - presumably aluminium was much better and much more fire resistant than what was used at GT however.

Some lawyers are going to be pouring over contract specifications at the moment I bet to see what exactly the contracts said.

In fact large value public contracts are available on contractsfinder.
If we knew the names of the supplier and the customer we could do a search now for no charge

www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search

Camden Council but need name of company they contracted with.