Industry Viewfinder Our survey indicated that confusion around responsibility affects the
continuation of such risks, with a clear lack of clarity present. When asked who the main onus should be on for rental accommodation fire safety, 49% said it should be landlords, with building owners just behind at 35%, builders at 2%, and local councils at 2%, with other responses including ‘all of the above’. It is arguable also that this contributes to the relatively slow response time in
addressing any highlighted failings in fire risk assessments. According to our respondents, it takes an average of 42.6 days to address such failures – leaving the average tenant vulnerable to potentially deadly fires for over a month. When asked what they believe are the main reasons these risks remain
present, the most frequent ‘significant reason’ listed in our survey, at a small majority (53%), was costs – with the above finger-pointing likely to cause issues with who foots the bill. This was followed by a wide range of significant reasons, including flammable products (46%), a lack of Government support (45%), tenants (41%), poorly maintained stock, (38%), lack of council funding (35%), cheap products (34%), uninformed tenants (28%), poor legislation (28%), malicious tenants (26%) and landlord malpractice (24%). One area noted – which negates any potential remedial work post fire risk
assessments – are barriers to reporting risks in the first place, with 15% of our respondents listing it as a significant reason. Similarly, as indicated earlier, when asked whether respondents had ever been put in a position where it would be uncomfortable to report fire safety issues, 16% said they had been at some point, with 15% of those still in such a position, and 11% of those who hadn’t, knowing someone who had. While these represent a small portion of our respondents, the consequences of a single unreported fire risk can be dire. Another cause of continued risk mentioned was ‘untrustworthy
manufacturers’, with 15% of respondents believing it to be a significant reason. Trust in manufacturers has been reported to fall post-Grenfell, but this was
not a view shared by all in our research. A minor majority (51%) reported that the disaster had not made them feel anything at all about product manufacturers, and 9% and 4% even noted that their trust had been fairly or very positively impacted by the event, respectively. There were however 22% of respondents for whom it fairly negatively impacted their trust in manufacturers, and 13% negatively – with respondents explaining that manufacturers must simply produce “better,” “more high quality products,” “be honest,” and conduct “robust testing.”
“In the years following Grenfell disaster, how has your trust in product manufacturers been affected?”
A recurring theme in our survey, it is clear that one of the stronger
solutions to preventing fire risk in the first place is to use ‘better’ products – which as above were argued to produce significantly reduced fire risk by 85% of our respondents. It is not always easy, however, to identify what makes a product ‘better.’
SPECIFICATION ‘BETTER’ PRODUCTS Fire safety products are not created equally, and definitions of a ‘better’ product varied somewhat between our respondents – though some constants were agreed across the vast majority. Reliability was one near-constant, with 91% of respondents agreeing it
defines a ‘better’ fire safety product. For over half of respondents, durability (72%), detailed information (61%),
“In your career, have you ever been put in a position where it would be uncomfortable to report fire safety issues or malpractice to a superior or relevant authority, or that your voice would not be heard in the matter?”
24 | HMMOctober/November 2021 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
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