London Fire Brigade says it has completed all 29 of the recommendations made at the end of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's first phase - overall good news, but some additional thoughts

londonfire-newsroom.prgloo.com/news/london-fi… A major philosophical thrust of the Phase One recs was to ensure a 'Plan B' exists if a building designed for 'stay put' failed in the future. Continuing to rely on this strategy for so long was a major and tragic part of the reason why the number of fatalities was so high...

I don't know if, when or why Grenfell and the building safety scandal will 'break through' in the way the Post Office Scandal has. But I'm confident if it does the reaction will be similar. There is such a common reaction of outrage when people hear the details for the first time By 'the details' I mean stuff like the fact that the govt paid for tests on the specific type of cladding later used on Grenfell in 2001, saw it fail so badly that it nearly burned the test facility down and still failed to ban it or check where it had been installed for 16 years

A quick lesson in housing finance:

Social tenants' rents aren't subsidised by your taxes. In fact, they cover the cost of maintaining the home, a chunk of the cost of building new ones and contribute to capital repairs to properties they don't live in Rents and charges paid to councils go into a ring-fenced Housing Revenue Account which covers the entire cost of their housing business, including new build. Housing associations 'general needs social rent' businesses typically generate a margin of around 20%. Here's an example:

81% of social tenants are white, 92% are UK nationals.
The overwhelming majority of immigrant households rent privately.
Social housing is built with initial grant, but its day-to-day running costs are covered by rent. Calling it 'subsidised' is misleading.

https://twitter.com/tomhfh/status/1742142306310893573

Since early December, this whole 'immigrants get all the social housing' narrative has appeared somewhere almost once a week. It always blurs the lines. Someone, somewhere has decided that this is a clever, emotive argument to push in 2024.

Over the next few months, the new building safety regulator will get 12,500 building safety cases for high rises, which will include structural stability reports. We've already seen problems with older (LPS) towers, modern concrete towers, modern timber towers and modular 1/n This means problems could be pretty widespread. What is our plan if even 2% of the buildings surveyed turn out not to be structurally sound? That's 250 buildings. What if 8 buildings in one medium-sized city which already has a homelessness crisis need to be 'decanted' at once?

Your regular reminder that 81% of new social housing lettings go to white British tenants and 90% go to UK nationals. At a dangerous political moment, please don't let the right establish one of their favourite narratives (lies): that immigrants get all the council housing. And yes, in London, it is still overwhelmingly going to UK nationals. Thanks to the many, many anonymous accounts who have expressed an interest in this particular question! You can find all the data here: app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjo…

Remember when Gove kicked Grenfell contractor Rydon off the Help to Buy scheme?

Well the company which supplied the combustible insulation is still raking in sales from the public purse, and bragging about it Saint Gobain is a global building materials firm, which owns Isover - a company which mostly makes non-combustible insulation. But in the 2000s, it decided it wanted a piece of the plastic insulation market as well, and targetted a purchase of UK company Celotex:

In August, a tribunal issued the first remediation order against the freeholder in a major step for the new building safety legislation. The judgement is important and you can read it here:

But I want to talk about something else: the expert witness 🧵 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64d9ebc6…
He is named as 'Mr Brian Martin of DCCH Experts LLP'.

As many of you will know, a Brian Martin was arguably the key witness during the Grenfell Tower Inquiry - the government official who missed multiple critical opportunities to tighten building safety guidance.

New: a judicial review attempting to force the Home Office to reconsider its rejection of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's recommendation that disabled residents of high rises should get 'personal emergency evacuation plans' has been rejected The judge said the rejection was "essentially a political decision" and while "desperately disappointing for many others that the carefully considered PEEPs recommendations... have not been implanted, but it was not an unlawful decision"

Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Our new research shows that 84% of social housing high rises still don't have sprinklers and 88% don't have block-wide fire alarms.

What happened to 'never again'?

insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/vast… The government was advised to encourage the retrofitting of sprinklers in social housing blocks by the coroner investigating six deaths at Lakanal House 10 years ago. It's three and a half since the Grenfell Tower Inquiry recommended manual fire alarms.

A couple of weeks old, but don't think any UK news outlets have picked up that Arconic - which sold the cladding used on Grenfell Tower - has reached a $74m with shareholders in the US who say it made misleading statements about the safety of its cladding

law360.com/articles/16002… 'Defendants allegedly assured investors... that Reynobond PE products were “safe and compliant,” “fully tested product[s], with building-code approvals throughout the world,” that Arconic “suppl[ies] and use[s] safe and reliable products”...

New documents show Cardinal Lofts - the block with the prohibition notice served this week - was signed off by the local authority despite being plainly non-compliant from the moment it was built

insidehousing.co.uk/news/cardinal-… There's ambiguity about the compliance of some blocks in the building safety crisis. Those with combustible balconies, window panels, Class 0 cladding or below 18m probably complied with official guidance while still breaching headline statutory requirements. Not Cardinal Lofts

Important to be clear that Gove’s announcement on the developers is only a small part of the puzzle in terms of solving the crisis. Takes care of 1,100 blocks (with no set timescale). That’s (at best) 15% of the effected buildings. Still a long way from the end of this story Gove has found a way to get real leverage over the big developers and used it effectively to get as much as he can out of them. He has been unsuccessful so far in getting other parties to cough up. Product manufacturers are at the heart of this and efforts to make them pay have…

Among the 11 developers yet to sign the building safety remediation contract is Grenfell Tower contractor Rydon. Risible. It also contains Ballymore who developed New Providence Wharf in Tower Hamlets, which was clad in a similar material to Grenfell Tower. The cladding was still on the walls during a major fire four years later

insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

New Grenfell Inquiry evidence shows insulation manufacturer Saint Gobain had documents from as early as 2010 which warned its product could cause ‘dense, acrid smoke’ leading to ‘incapacitation and death’. It marketed them for use on high rises anyway

insidehousing.co.uk/news/grenfell-… Last month (following requests from IH) the Grenfell Tower Inquiry released a cache of additional documents revealing what was known about smoke toxicity in the years before the fire. They tell a shocking story, which I recount here:

insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

I do want to point out that IH has been reporting on evidence that the govt guidance was flawed before Grenfell for years. While it's nice to finally be vindicated by them admitting this as well, it was completely unnecessary to wait this long:

insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/the-… Among many other things, a much quicker admission that govt guidance was flawed would have resulted in a totally different approach to the cladding crisis. They would have known from the start that lots of buildings would need work:

insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insigh…

Gove's apology goes a step further. Governments have previously accepted a failure of oversight of the system of building regulation, the implication being that inspectors failed and they failed to stop them. They have resisted directly accepting their guidance was flawed: Weeks after the fire, Philip Hammond said the cladding was 'banned' by guidance, and the housing department issued a letter to that effect. A lot of its response since has rested on that claim: essentially that it was blameless except for a failure to notice non-compliance

Today new fire door regulations come into force, a major, important and belated plank of the post-Grenfell response. But what are they and are they enough? Some discussion below:

insidehousing.co.uk/news/housing-p… The rules will require responsible persons (building owners/managers) to check fire doors in communal areas quarterly and flat entrance annually in all residential blocks taller than 11m. This is of course millions of doors, and it's a major new safety/compliance responsibility.

🚨 NEW LEAKED DOCUMENT 🚨

I've obtained a previously unreleased document which reveals Grenfell insulation manufacturer Saint Gobain had research showing its product released high levels of toxic smoke 18 months before fire:

insidehousing.co.uk/news/insulatio… A 'technical memo' circulated to senior members of the business in January 2016 shows it had commissioned research which showed its 'polyisocyanurate' insulation released smoke containing cyanide and other toxins in higher volumes than competitor products

From a conversation over the weekend... Would this work as a housing policy in a city with high PRS and low social housing, like London, Brighton, Bristol or Oxford (obviously assuming relevant powers devolved + grant available) 1. Rent control and 'no fault' eviction ban in PRS.
2. Hefty tax on anyone selling a second home/former PRS property to discourage landlords from selling up
3. Landlords exempt from tax if they sell tenanted to council at slightly discounted rate for use as social housing

Here's a quick thread about government, social housing and the lack of regulation to ensure tenants have some protection when housing management goes wrong. Because... well... there is a certain level of hypocrisy from current ministers which can't be left unaddressed In 2010 when the Conservatives took office, they enacted a 'bonfire of the QUANGOs', where a bunch of government agencies were scrapped over night. This included the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) which housing minister Grant Shapps memorably branded 'toast'