As Britain absorbs the second phase of the report into the Grenfell Tower inferno, with its accumulation of horrors, an event last week serves as warning and a rebuke to the pace with which we have got here. Is it really possible, seven years after that disaster, that the cause of another London tower-block fire could be traced — once again — to flammable external cladding?
This time, when an eight-storey block of flats in Dagenham burst into flames, thankfully all residents escaped with their lives. But there was more than an echo of Grenfell as families fled their flats in the early hours of a Monday morning under direction from the fire brigade, the block blazing behind them. The source of the fire is being investigated, but attention is turning to the cladding on the fifth and sixth floors, deemed “non-compliant”, and due to be removed. Materials on scaffolding are thought to be another possible culprit, too. But why is this hazard there at all, nearly a decade on from Grenfell?
This could have been a tragedy. It nearly was. But the same potential hangs over 172,000 homes in England, which are somehow still coated in this stuff. Around a third of those are in buildings higher than eleven meters (tall buildings are more difficult of course to escape), and some 1,500 buildings have faults identified as “life-threatening fire safety risks”. Any one of these could, at the drop of a match, repeat Grenfell in a much more fulsome manner.
There has been time in the last eight years for two plays about Grenfell to be written and performed: “Dictating to the Estate”, and “Grenfell: Value Engineering”, each of which felt the proceedings following the fire were damning enough to quote from extensively. But there has not been time, apparently, to absorb the event’s most basic lesson and complete its most urgent task: to make flats less flammable.
The worst of the burden is still being borne by leaseholders, many of whom are stuck living in their cladded homes which quickly became unsellable. Who after all would buy one of these deathtraps? Many have to stay, aware of the danger, as the value of their investment dwindles. To add to the insult and potential injury, bills soon started to appear on their doormats from building-management companies, charging them for chipping off the combustible material and for employing security guards to watch for potential fires.
Will the near disaster in Dagenham jolt the government into action?
It took a full five years of this before the government finally passed the Building Safety Act, which is supposed to force developers who used the cladding in the first place to pay for it to be removed. But even that hasn’t sorted it out. Firms are now trying with all their might to avoid paying these sums, dragging out the process. Some are even willing to go bankrupt in order to dodge the charges. There is also a growing trend for insurers to decline or charge more for these properties, heaping further costs on flat owners.
Today the Grenfell Inquiry published their Phase 2 report, which itemising the failures that led to 72 deaths, which ranged in age from an 84 year old to an unborn baby. Phase one of the report concluded that the cladding did not comply with building regulations, which was the “principle” reason for the rapid spread of the fire. It found, too, that the government heard warnings that Grenfell Tower was unsafe seven years before the fire, after tests conducted on the external walls showed they didn’t meet standards. Speaking to the BBC recently, its author Dame Judy Hackitt accused people of “passing the buck” and warned that urgent action was needed to replace the cladding.
Phase two investigated and picked through the web of 19 organisations and companies and the 58 people responsible for refurbishing the tower before the fire in June 2017. This second part of the report was set back three times — delays defended by the Met commissioner Stuart Cundy who says it is important to get the details right. Nevertheless, it has taken far too long. The next question is whether authorities will act on its recommendations any time soon, or continue to dither and procrastinate.
Will the near disaster in Dagenham serve to jolt them into action? It’s a question. After all Grenfell itself was not enough to move things along in a timely manner. Just eight months before the fire, a resident had warned that “only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord”. Seven years after that catastrophic event, ineptitude and incompetence continue.
The building itself stands wrapped in plastic, awaiting a decision about how best to memorialise the disaster. Inadvertently, it has ended up representing the response — still waiting for completion.
