Southwark has second highest number of buildings with serious fire defects

Southwark has the second-highest number of buildings in London with ‘simultaneous evacuation’ advice, meaning they have serious fire safety issues.

Five years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy, people living in 94 buildings in Southwark have instructions not to ‘stay put’ in their block, but to leave instead, because of fire safety defects. These include cladding, but could also be other problems.

Southwark’s 94 blocks are behind only Tower Hamlets, which has 165, according to the response to a Freedom of Information request put to the London Fire Brigade by trade publication Inside Housing.  Hackney, Newham and Greenwich make up the rest of the top five. These figures include private as well as council blocks.

Council demand answers after a report commissioned on Marie Curie House fire safety does not ‘address key questions’

Among the buildings in Southwark with simultaneous evacuation orders is the council’s Marie Curie House in Camberwell, which has the same fire safety issues as Lakanal House, where six people died in a fire in 2009. Residents of Lakanal, as well as Grenfell, were told to stay put in the event of a fire. Astonishingly, the council-commissioned report into fire safety at Marie Curie failed to answer the question of why defects were not addressed earlier.

Lakanal itself and the response to the tragedy may provide clues to why Grenfell took place, according to a report into building regulation and fire safety written as part of the inquiry into the 72 deaths in the 2017 fire.

Edinburgh University’s Ken Bisby said that the government should have worked out whether the experts interviewed at the Lakanal inquest represented the building industry more broadly, and whether safety regulation was being enforced properly.

Prof Bisby added: “Without any obvious attempt to identify, understand, and address these wider failings of competence and oversight, these factors were free to fester within the industry, and eventually to manifest in the refurbishment and overcladding of Grenfell Tower, and in the design and construction of hundreds (thousands?) of other residential buildings in England and Wales, with disastrous consequences”.

‘Don’t stay put’: Fire safety advice changed in sixty five Southwark buildings

Southwark Council leader Kieron Williams said the council was “working every day to improve the fire safety of council homes” and would continue respond to the Grenfell inquiry recommendations.

He added: “The Grenfell Tower tragedy is imprinted on all our minds, as one of the darkest days our city has seen. Today we remember the 72 precious lives lost on that dreadful night five years ago, and stand together across London to say we will do everything we can to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

The council will light its buildings in green in solidarity with everyone involved in the tragedy, Cllr Williams said.

“It is a sad truth that after five long years we are still waiting for many of the national changes needed to prevent another tragedy of this kind, and I urge the Government to act this year without further delay.”