Through all the inevitable trauma (‘These people will need help for the rest of our lives’, 9 June), Grenfell survivors have extended their concerns to the safety of other tower blocks. We believe their voice was a major factor in forcing the government, 11 months on, to finally yield to local authorities’ demands and fund replacement of combustible cladding. The estimated £400m central government contribution is a substantial victory, despite being borrowed from the “affordable homes” programme, and despite not being enough to make homes fire safe. But timing is now critical. Works must be started – and finished – by the autumn, if they are not to leave residents in terror of fire for another year, or alternatively leave them in buildings that have been stripped of insulation and left all winter exposed to the elements. Last winter, many residents were freezing, ill and miserable in de-clad homes, and facing astronomical bills. We wrote twice to the secretary of state about these issues but received no reply.
Over 300 buildings, 159 in social housing, need re-cladding. The latest statistics on remediation works show three starts and three completions in the last month, bringing the number of remediated buildings to a grand total of 10. The government’s recent promise does nothing for private leaseholders, student residences, schools, hospitals or other workplaces. But even those due to benefit from it are being put at risk by continuing delays. Thousands already die in cold homes every winter. And fires do happen.
The standards and practices that led to the Grenfell fire must not go on to cost more lives.
Ruth London
Fuel Poverty Action
• The Grenfell inquiry will examine closely the impact of the London Fire Brigade’s so-called “stay put” policy on this terrible fire. What must not be missed in the inquiry, which has so far focused on the actions of operational firefighters on that night, is how a policy that had previously kept safe the people of London and elsewhere for many years would be effective only as long as underpinned and buttressed by strong fire prevention legislation, with regular inspections of tower blocks and fire protection systems by local firefighters and specialist fire prevention officers, supported by statutory enforcement.
Deregulation of fire safety by both Labour and Conservative governments was carried through in the face of strong opposition from the Fire Brigades Union. When decisions were then taken by officers and elected members of the London Fire & Civil Defence Authority (LFCDA), local government predecessor of the current Greater London Authority, to discontinue such inspections and enforcement, or to hand them over to private companies – some led by retired senior fire officers – the whole policy was fatally undermined. Such matters must also be fully considered by the inquiry and officers and politicians of the LFCDA, in addition to serving firefighters, called as witnesses, if a full picture is to be obtained.
Chris Price
(Retired London firefighter 1979-2006), London
• The Grenfell disaster only became possible after materials of limited combustibility became legal in 2007. Hundreds of towers were then covered with partly organic materials that appeared to pass the relevant tests, despite being combustible in a hot-enough fire. Previously the guidance made it clear that combustible cladding was a risk in tall buildings, but the current version deleted this warning and reduced the standard to class B.
It is worth remembering that in London before 1984 windows had to be separated by a yard of inorganic material, or by a balcony. This barrier delayed fire spread and gave time to fight it. There were never any fatalities, other than in the flat where the fire started, so the stay-put strategy made perfect sense. The awful reality is that the 2007 guidance made Grenfell possible, but evidence for this has not yet been heard by the inquiry, and the unsafe guidance is still in force.
Steve Murray
Architect, Swanage, Dorset
• Although they should not be compared with the suffering of those directly affected, the grief and outrage felt by members of the public about the Grenfell Tower fire are strong, sincere, and to be commended. Many now believe that the public inquiry should and will identify individuals responsible for putting the tower into such a condition that 72 people died from the atrocity, and that those individuals should be punished appropriately.
But the public response should not be confined to blaming and punishing those primarily responsible. The political and social climate in which any culpable decisions were taken, the climate of cost-cutting, minimising care and responsibility, relaxing standards and controls, and skimping inspections, was not created arbitrarily and out of nowhere by council officials, estate managers and the suppliers of building materials. It arose in the context of repeated electoral choices that taxes should be lowered, especially for the rich, and social provisions be reduced across the board.
If the Grenfell inquiry is not to become an exercise in scapegoating, then those who voted for the antisocial, mean-spirited society we now live in, and those who have successfully persuaded them to do so over many decades, might ask themselves whether their choices made any contribution, however slight and indirect, to the horrific events of 14 June 2017.
Rip Bulkeley
Editor, Poems for Grenfell Tower
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