To consider any requests received in accordance with Part 4, Section B, Paragraph 29 of the Council’s Constitution.
Minutes:
The Panel received a deputation on behalf of Haringey Defend Council Housing. The deputation was in relation to Agenda Item 9, Fire Safety Action Plan. The deputation was introduced by Paul Burnham and Michael Hodges. The key points put forward in the deputation are summarised below:
· The deputation party set out that they were shocked that all 80 council housing blocks above 5 stories had life critical fire safety defects. This was broken down to 46 blocks with combustible external panels and 80 blocks with defective fire safety doors and compartmentation defects.
· The deputation party contended that this had not been reported candidly to residents or councillors.
· Mr Burnham advised that he resided in Newbury House, which had 15 floors, a single staircase, and defective fire doors. The block has a tolerable risk of fire, which effectively meant that no expenditure was necessary. The building also had six vertical ribbons of combustible composite panelling on the exterior walls. In an email exchange with Mr Burnham, officers had advised that the cladding on Haringey buildings was not comparable with the whole façade cladding at Grenfell. Mr Burnham referred to press article that the officer had sent to him that suggested that limited cladding was safe.
· In an email exchange with Mr Burnham, officers had advised that Council policy was that combustible panels should be replaced on the normal timescales for window replacement programmes. The industry standard for this, it was suggested, was 30 years. The deputation party commented that they believed that this was completely wrong.
· The deputation party drew Members attention to the window safety test for Newbury House, which said that; a fire could spread over the balconies of any of the 85 properties to ignite window panels. It was alleged that the report also highlighted that the vertical panels could aid the rapid spread of fire internally and externally. Mr Burnham suggested that therefore, the design did not need to be exactly the same as Grenfell to be a serious fire hazard.
· It was suggested that the tower block was already a high risk building, with multiple sources of ignition and with complex and highly fallible management systems.
· Mr Burnham set out that in addition to the risk of fire spreading through the external panelling, he would characterise the Council as having; cost-cutting policies in place, having defective fire risk assessments, outsourcing inspections, and having complacent management. He suggested that these were all the elements required for a major fire disaster.
· The deputation party advised that the government policy was that all combustible materials should be removed urgently from the external walls of tall buildings.
· The deputation party recommended that the Panel should refer back the Fire Safety Action Plan report on the agenda, as it did not mention life critical safety faults.
The following arose in discussion of the deputation:
a. The Panel sought clarification from the deputation party about what they were asking the Council to do. In response, Mr Burnham commented that he would like the Council to be open and honest about the level of risk, to undertake the remediation work required in the blocks, and to explain what remediation work had been undertaken since Grenfell. The deputation party suggested that the Panel might want to do a dedicated piece of scrutiny work on this and that the Council should be lobbying central government to provide additional funding for council homes.
b. The Panel sought clarification around the deputation party’s concerns about use of sub-contractors to carry out fire safety risk assessment. Members commented that that this was a widespread practice in the industry. In response, Mr Burnham acknowledged that use of sub-contractors was rife in the industry and his concerns were that sub-contractors were being used as part of a cost-cutting agenda. The assertion was that the Council had contracted a company to carry out fire safety inspections and that that company had then sub-contracted it out to a smaller company for a lower fee. Mr Burnham advised that he had been on the website of the sub-contractor in question, who were not appointed by Cabinet, and their website advertised success stories where they lauded their own ability to reduce clients’ costs arising from fire safety inspections.
c. The Chair asked the deputation party to clarify the point about their disagreement with the assertion that the fire would not have happened at Grenfell before its refurbishment. In response, the deputation party set out that Grenfell was a failure of multiple systems; how the cladding was marketed, lack of building control, failure of fire service management, and governance failures. It was commented that the tower blocks were complex and that there was 14 different monthly safety inspections carried out on Newbury House alone. Mr Burnham advised that they were worried that the combustible panels could contribute to the spread of fire. It was suggested that this was a risk, and that he was concerned that the Council was not taking that risk sufficiently serious enough.
d. The Panel summarised the deputation party’s ask as a) being open and transparent, b) work out what remediation work needed to be completed, and c) lobby the government for additional funding. It was suggested that the first and the third of these didn’t cost any money and could be implemented quite easily. The Panel asked whether the deputation party accepted that ultimately there just wasn’t sufficient money available to do everything in the timescales that they were asking. In response, Mr Burnham replied that he did not accept that there wasn’t enough money available and that it was beholden on the Council to ask government the question. It was commented that there was £37m in the HRA Capital budget and that the deputation party had no way of know how this was spent, and the extent to which some of this could be reallocated to fire safety.
e. In response to a follow-up, Mr Burnham commented that a change of government policy re additional funding for council homes was essential and that since the change of government, the LGA, housing associations and the Chartered Institute of Social Housing had written a letter to the government asking for additional funding, which had been supported by 20 local authorities.
f. In response to a question, the deputation party advised that very often there was a need for comprehensive replacement, of say fire doors, as this was often more cost effective. The deputation party also raised concerns about a historical legal case where the Council had asked for evidence that the fire doors supplied by a contractor were compliant with the necessary regulations.
The Chair thanked the deputation party for speaking to the panel and for answering Member’s questions.