18 COMMENT
not require formal changes in regulations or bureaucratic processes.
• Prepare a range of standard specifica- tions for a range of standard safety works, such as retrofitting of sprinkler systems, installing secondary fire escapes, improving smoke detection and fire alarm systems and fire doors
• Establish an effective whistle-blowing system that allows any concerned person, whether they are a tenant, member of staff, or a contractor, to raise worries about possible hazards or safety breaches. This needs to be combined with a feedback process, so residents can feel their voices are being heard and acted upon.
AGENDA We need to ensure the issue of tenants’ safety is not allowed to slip down the agenda behind other issues such as how we ensure new housebuilding targets are met, or how value for money savings are delivered to fund the rent cutting regime. Safety cannot be allowed to take second fiddle again, it is much too important and the price of inactivity was tragically demonstrated in the many lives lost since the Lakanal House fire. The terms of the reference for the
Hackitt review will only be published after the terms of reference for the wider Grenfell inquiry have been confirmed. This is following a rather testy set of meetings between the judge, the Grenfell Tower task force (established in the main to support the council’s efforts) and the tower’s residents and supporters. We know from the Government’s
announcement in setting up Dame Judith Hackitt’s review, that it will examine the following areas: • The regulatory system around the design, construction and on-going management of buildings in relation to fire safety
• Related compliance and enforcement issues
• International regulation and experience in this area. Residents and landlords can take a good
degree of comfort in Dame Judith’s background as a former chair of the Health & Safety Executive. She will report jointly to the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid and the Home Secretary Amber Rudd. To allow discussions with tenants to start
in earnest, the Government could usefully give assurances to landlords that money will definitely be found to pay for neces- sary safety works. Tenants in Camden showed some understandable reluctance in
returning to their tower block homes, after their high profile overnight evacuation immediately after the Grenfell fire, while tenants in Salford have expressed worries about their high-rise homes, which some of them described as “living in a tinderbox.”
DEREGULATION Immediately after the fire in mid June, Ministers were quick to suggest that money would be no object in sorting out safety concerns and allaying residents’ worries over whether they would wake up in the morning. Once the initial horror wore off, so apparently did the Treasury’s commitment to pick up the bill, and the leaders of councils and housing associa- tions were left wondering what they could afford to do on their own. Eventually the Chancellor revealed that additional finan- cial resources could be found for councils, but other landlords want to know what help they will receive. Leading safety experts got frustrated at
the lack of meaningful progress, so one month after the Grenfell fire, they wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister, demanding that Government scraps its deregulatory approach to health and safety and treats spending on safety works as an investment in property. In a particularly damaging and stark comment on the
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