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Fire safety Public housing
Association
Press
A fire at a residential block in
London has focused attention
on the state of some council
housing in Britain and the
role of refurbishments.
Simon Ellery reports
I
n July this year a fire in a block of high-rise flats in
Camberwell, south London, killed six people. The
official investigation into the blaze is continuing,
but the tragedy has raised concerns about fire
safety in such public sector housing.
Lakanal House, the 14-storey tower block where the
fire occurred, was built in 1959 and underwent a £3m
refurbishment in 2007. According to some experts,
poor maintenance and refurbishment work at the
block, together with a flawed safety regime, meant that
new building services, such as ductwork or cabling,
could have compromised fire safety.
A faulty television on the ninth floor started the
fire. It then spread not only up to the 11th floor but
also down to the fifth. This hampered rescue services
because they could not tackle the blaze on the ninth
and higher floors until they had controlled the fire on
the lower floors. By this time some of the occupants
on floor 11 had died.
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
(RRO) requires the tower block owner – usually a local
authority – to ensure a ‘responsible person’ carries out
a fire-risk assessment (FRA). Moreover, when major
refurbishment work is carried out, a new assessment
should be conducted. But since town halls have done
away with experienced in-house clerks of work, that
The fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London (pictured
task usually falls to a third party.
here and top right) started in a home on the ninth floor and spread
to floors five and 11. Questions have been raised about the role of
In many cases fire authorities then audit third-party
refurbishments within the block and the ability of the fire to spread.
assessments. If ‘serious shortcomings’ are found, an >
www.cibsejournal.com December 2009 CIBSE Journal 27
CIBSEdec09 pp26-28,30 fire.indd 27 19/11/09 16:24:12
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