South Essex Homes put fire safety ahead of refurbishing kitchens and bathrooms – it felt it couldn't afford not to
firemen examines a burnt out flat within the Lakanal House block of Sceaux Gardens Estate, Camberwell.
In July 2009 a fire broke out at Lakanal House, a tower block in Camberwell, south
Since the tragic events of 2009, the issue of fire safety in tower blocks, particularly in the social housing sector, has been revisited as landlords assess their current levels of safety precautions and strive to improve them. In Southend, our arm's length management organisation has embarked on a project to reach new heights in fire safety.
South Essex Homes manages 6,700 properties and 13 tower blocks on behalf of Southend borough council. Following the implementation of the regulatory reform (fire safety) order in 2005, the organisation made a commitment to improve and modernise the tower blocks it manages and to equip them with the latest fire safety measures at a cost of £3m over the next four years.
Safety in Southend
The project aims to make Southend's tower blocks some of the safest in the country by installing new fire prevention features and educating tenants on the role they can play in preventing fires. We are encouraging tenants to take a number of simple steps: ensuring fire doors are not left open; burning material is not thrown into waste chutes; domestic rubbish is not left in communal areas.
Like many parts of the country, Southend has a very high population density and tower blocks were identified as the only realistic solution to help meet the demand for social housing in the late 1960s.
Although the Lakanal House tragedy has caused concern among many tenants about the safety of tower blocks, recent reports have identified that there is no evidence to suggest that tower blocks are less safe in the event of a fire. Tenants will still need to be housed in tower blocks, but these buildings can be made as safe as possible by the installation of modern safety measures.
Communicating this message to tenants – along with providing education on what to do in the event of a fire and how to plan their means of escape – is a key feature of the project that can be replicated by housing providers across the country.
The project also created a very close working partnership between all parties involved in fire safety. Following a recent fire at another tower block, South Essex Homes and the local fire service went door to door visiting every resident in the block to ensure they were aware of our fire safety advice. Last month South Essex Homes' fire safety measures were recognised by the government's leading fire and rescue adviser Sir Ken Knight, the author of the interim report into the Lakanal House fire and is the
Lessons learned
To ensure future sustainability from the modernisation programme, South Essex Homes considered the built environment when looking at the fire safety needs. We only chose products that are certified and tested in a full scale fire test and also in a smoke test; we know how the products will perform in the event of a fire.
Improvements to
Although housing organisations are under unprecedented pressure to reduce budgets and to cut spending, South Essex Homes considered these fire safety measures to be of such high importance that budgets were prioritised to ensure that the programme could be completed. Many housing providers will be in a similar position of having to choose between giving tenants a new kitchen or ensuring the safety of their tenants but we took the view that we couldn't afford not to carry out these works.
In light of the Lakanal House tragedy, Local Government Improvement and Development has produced specific guidance on fire safety in tower blocks. The National Federation of Almos has been closely involved in drawing up this guidance and will identify and share good practice within the social housing sector. We hope that the latest initiative from South Essex Homes will set an example to promote high standards in future.