Today (14 June 2023) marks the sixth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire in London where 72 people lost their lives.
It is one year on since the Building Safety Act 2022 passed into law, but what real change has happened six years on from the tragedy?
Deputy Editor of Inside Housing, Peter Apps, recently said: "Grenfell can feel like a past story—it’s not. It’s something that needs to be kept in the public eye if we want to see the companies responsible held to account".
The second stage of the public inquiry will not release its final report until next year and prosecutions, if any, will not start until after then.
Recommendations from the Phase 1 report have still not been enacted by the government.
What has changed?
The Fire Safety Act 2021 came four years after the fire and included providing the fire services with floor plans and building material information, and checking lifts and fire doors. Things not provided for Grenfell.
The Fire Safety (England) Regulations SI 2022/547 introduced new responsibilities for "responsible persons" in tall residential buildings across England, and implemented the majority of the recommendations made by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry in its Phase 1 report.
For a multi-occupied residential buildings of at least 18 metres in height or seven or more storeys, a responsible person must:
For multi-occupied residential buildings over 11 metres in height, a responsible person must undertake quarterly checks on all communal fire doors and annual checks on flat entrance doors.
In all multi-occupied residential buildings, a responsible person must provide residents with relevant fire safety instructions and information about the importance of fire doors.
As a result, owners and contractors are appointing building safety champions and dedicated teams for every project.
Those responsible for the safety of high-rise residential buildings now have until 1 October to register with the new Building Safety Regulator. The chief of the new regulator, Peter Baker, has called it a "landmark moment" and an opportunity for the industry to raise its standards.
But more is needed to implement real change and save lives.
What still needs to be done?
Sprinkler systems
Building regulations in the UK have required sprinklers to be fitted in new buildings taller than 11 metres since November 2020, but there remains no requirement to retrofit them to existing blocks.
It costs around £500,000 to retrofit sprinklers per block, with obvious variance for the number of flats, and there has been no government grant to support councils or housing associations to do so.
Three months after the Grenfell fire, central government refused to grant local authorities further borrowing capacity to pay for sprinklers, branding them "additional not essential".
New data gathered by Inside Housing from 37 large social landlords who collectively own 1,768 high-rise residential buildings, comprising more than 60,000 individual flats, said only 282 of these blocks have been fitted with sprinklers (16%).
Fire alarms
There are no regulations to ensure fire alarms in high rise buildings, and of those with fire alarms fitted they are lacking fire alarms capable of sending an alert to the whole block, which was something recommended by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry in October 2019.
Of the 1,768 high-rise residential buildings, only 334 blocks have been fitted with such a device (18.9%).
The inquiry recommended the installation of manual fire alarms, which could send an alert to the whole building if activated by an incident commander.
These devices became a mandatory requirement for new builds in December 2022, but, like sprinklers, there is no requirement for them to be retrofitted.
Current statutory guidance actively discourages the use of fire alarms and advises building owners to seek a second opinion if they are recommended by a fire risk assessor.
Information
Matt Keen commented in the New Civil Engineer that there are two further areas that are key for the Building Safety Act 2022 to move from the theoretical to the practical.
Firstly, data ownership must be made of the "golden thread of information". This means collecting, storing and sharing data of the lifespan of a building, from planning and construction, to occupation and any expansion or re-work.
This applies to residential structures of at least 18 metres in height or seven storeys. Owners will need to consider the optimum way to structure data and ensure it is accessible and manageable at all times.
Secondly, fire design safety information is a key requirement for the Building Safety Regulator and a step to address shortcomings at Grenfell.
The objective is to assign clear owners for tasks, events and information relating to fire safety before, during, and after an incident, establishing accountability and ownership for every relevant high-rise building in the UK.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently argued that this message has "not fully landed" since the Building Act 2022 became law, so there is more work and education to be done in the area.
Disabled residents
40% of Grenfell residents who were disabled died in the fire. Phase 1 of the inquiry was clear that high-rise building owners had to have personal emergency evacuation plans (PEEPs) for all disabled residents.
But last year the Home Office revealed it would not go ahead with this to "cut costs", and that there were "significant issues" with the "practicality, proportionality and safety" of PEEPs.
The disabled residents that died had no individual plans to aid their escape, so were forced to "stay put". This controversial policy, which was kept on Grenfell for over an hour and a half despite the out of control fire, is still kept in place.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government is "committed to delivering proposals that enhance the safety of residents whose ability to self-evacuate in an emergency may be compromised" and that it is currently analysing responses to a public consultation on emergency evacuation.
Cladding
In September 2018 the government banned combustible materials on the external walls of new blocks of flats, hospitals, care homes and student accommodation over 18 metres high. That means no cladding, insulation or other materials on the outside of the building can be flammable.
However a row continues to rumble over who should pay for removing the cladding from residential buildings out of the developer, government or flat owner.
Over 94% of the 486 buildings over 18 metres in height with dangerous ACM cladding, which was used on Grenfell, have either started or completed work.
Remediation cladding work is supposed to begin on buildings between 11 and 18 metres high, but has not yet. After the fire Dame Judith Hackitt published a report that found the entire building regulatory system was "not fit for purpose".
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