Jodie and Ronan McGloin’s flat was destroyed along with 22 other families’ in the Richmond House fire in 2019
(Picture: Lucy Young)In the early hours of the morning, Jess Davy was awoken by loud banging on the front door of her flat. At first, still half asleep, she thought it was just kids messing around. When she heard screams she got up to investigate.
What she found was a scene of chaos in the corridor.
Neighbours were milling around. One, dressed only in a towel, was on the phone to the fire brigade. “She said there is a fire, we have to get out,” said Jess. “We had a “stay put” policy but, probably after Grenfell, we knew that we needed to evacuate.”
Jess, who is a midwife, grabbed her bag and coat and fled, stopping only to help a couple carrying their infant twins to safety and worrying about the cats they’d had to leave behind.
“We ran towards another building to take shelter and as I turned around I could see a huge orange glow above my flat,” she said. “I phoned my mum and said: “My flat is burning down”.
“I could hear these popping, crackling sounds as the fire went from one flat to another, and I just sat down on the grass and watched the fire take hold.”
Almost miraculously, nobody was injured in the devastating fire, but scores of people lost their homes. And well over two years on, and despite housing minister Michael Gove’s new get tough approach on developers who build unsafe homes, many of the victims of the fire remain stuck in temporary homes.
The blaze at Richmond House broke out on September 9, 2019.
Despite the efforts of 125 firefighters, who arrived on the scene within minutes, the four-storey building went up like a tinderbox. Pictures taken the morning after show what remained: an unsalvageable skeleton of charred timber surrounded by broken glass, which was demolished in 2020.
Sixty people, including 17 children, lost their homes that night. It was probably only thanks to their quick and unilateral decision to evacuate, against official advice to remain indoors and wait for assistance, that none were injured or killed.
This was a blessing, but what has emerged over the past two years is a depressingly familiar post-Grenfell tale of inadequate building standards and property developers who don’t take responsibility when things go terribly wrong.
Richmond House was built by St James, part of the Berkeley Group, in 2011, as part of The Hamptons, a pretty 645-home New England-style development of weather-boarded flats and houses ranged around an ornamental lake in Worcester Park, south London.
Richmond House, which contained 23 flats, was earmarked for affordable housing and sold on to Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association (MTVHA).
Jess and her partner Mike, a crane operator, had bought a 45 per cent share in their £400,000 two-bedroom, second-floor flat from the association in 2015.
They shared the flat with their son, Rex, who had celebrated his fourth birthday with a party at Jess’s parents’ house the day before the fire. Another blessing was that he had stayed on with his grandparents and Jess was home alone when the fire broke out.
Jess’s father rushed to her side, and they spent the rest of the night sheltering in The Hamptons’ community hall, watching the fire crews work, and waiting for news.
Jodie McGloin, a biomedical scientist for the NHS, and her husband Ronan, a data analyst, had bought a 35 per cent stake in their £395,000 two-bedroom flat in Richmond House in 2018.
They had just got married and were expecting their first child. “It was a lovely place,” said Ronan, a data analyst. “It was idyllic”.
Jodie, 38, and Ronan, 36, lived on the ground floor and were also woken up by their neighbours as news of the fire spread. Jodie immediately grabbed their year-old daughter and fled – she didn’t even stop to put her shoes on — while Ronan grabbed a few essentials – jackets, phones – and followed.
That night, a kindly neighbour took them in, and the next day, they went to stay with Jodie’s family in Essex before returning to London for work. After a grim two weeks in the Premier Inn in Tolworth, they found a flat to rent nearby.
More than two years on from the fire they remain in limbo, renting a house in Stoneleigh, a mile from Richmond House, while continuing to pay the mortgage on their demolished flat. The plan is that it will be rebuilt although Ronan and Jodie, don’t know if they can face returning.
Rather than go into temporary accommodation, Jess, 32, stayed on with her parents, breaking the news to Rex that his home and everything in it, including all the birthday presents she had brought home after the party, was lost.
She and Mike were in the process of splitting up, so he returned to his parents’ home and they decided to cut their losses and sell their share of their flat back to MTVHA.
Jess, who now has a new partner and has had a second child, finally moved out of her parents’ home and into a new house in March, closing at least one chapter of this story.
Meanwhile, an independent investigation into the fire was commissioned by MTVHA.
It concluded that the reason for its terrifyingly rapid spread was that, just like at Grenfell Tower, compartmentalisation that should have been in place between the flats was inadequate.
Berkeley would not comment, but since the fire, remediation work has been carried out on at least seven other buildings, ranging from installing extra fire alarms, to “façade works” and installing missing cavity barriers.
In terms of compensation, residents were given £3,000-a-head to help replace lost furniture in the immediate aftermath of the fire. Hotel bills and interim housing has been paid for by the building’s insurers.
However, some residents, including Jess, Jodie and Ronan, didn’t have contents insurance, which means they are thousands of pounds out of pocket.
At first, Berkeley looked very much like it was going to step up.
Tony Pidgley, the firm’s outspoken, self-made founder, met residents face-to-face, apologised, and promised to compensate them for their losses during a meeting that reduced many residents to tears, and which Ronan recorded.
Then, last summer, Pidgley suffered a fatal stroke.
“Berkeley are now saying it is not their fault, and they won’t take responsibility,” said Paul Ridge, a partner at law firm Bindmans, who is representing the residents of Richmond House fire as well as many of Grenfell Tower’s victims.
In mid-September, Berkeley informed Ridge it had a “secret report” that would absolve it of blame. Ridge cannot comment, since he has not been permitted to see it, but to him the facts of the matter are simple. “The spread of the fire was ferocious, and that is poor construction,” he said.
“This is a company which made more than £500m profit in the last 12 months. What the residents are asking for amounts to no more than a couple of days’ profit.”
In January, Michael Gove met with a group of developers to discuss how works to rectify building safety issues on blocks like Richmond House should be paid for.
A spokesperson for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said that housebuilders needed to deliver a “fully funded action plan” by the start of March. If they failed to do so, Gove has not ruled out taking legal action to force them into line.
But this will not help Jess with the anxiety attacks she still suffers from. As well as compensation to cover her material losses and her trauma, what she would really like is an apology.
“I thought that I was safe and happy in that flat, but we were not safe,” she said. “We just thought we were. It makes it very much: ‘Who can you trust?’ now.”
Ronan estimates his family has lost around £40,000 worth of possessions. Although he is “kicking himself” for not having contents insurance, he feels the developer should accept responsibility.
“If the building was built right … [the fire brigade] … should have been able to control the fire,” he said.
