Michael Cliffe House on Finsbury estate

• COUNCILLOR Diarmaid Ward, executive member for housing and development, in a letter to Islington Council tenants and residents, attempts to assure us that the council is doing all it can to ensure our “homes are safe”. We are not assured.

In respect of the tall blocks, our experience concurs with comments made by Hannah Mansell, chair of the Passive Fire Protection Forum and trustee of the Children’s Burns Trust, following the Grenfell Tower blaze. She said: “There is an endemic fire safety problem in this type of housing. I have walked around tower blocks documenting and filming fire safety breaches. I’ve seen flats without fire doors, no emergency lighting or signage on fire doors and escape routes, broken fire rated glass, wedged-open fire doors, poor fire stopping around service hatches that breach compartmentation, no smoke seals in fire doors, rubbish and combustible material left in common areas and no information displayed on the specific fire plan of the building.”

Cllr Ward mentions that all council homes have up-to-date fire risk assessments (FRAs). However, a number of organisations have raised concerns about the adequacy of these assessments, including Arnold Dix, international disaster investigator who was interviewed recently by the BBC.

He has carried out a preliminary assessment of Michael Cliffe House on Finsbury estate. Michael Cliffe and Patrick Coman houses don’t have cladding, which seems to have been the major cause of the terrible consequences of the Grenfell Tower fire, but there are issues relating to compartmentation breaches.

There are gaps in FRAs and inadequate follow up on items they raise. We especially have concerns about fire risk items that have arisen in relation to capital works on our estate.

Issues regarding fire doors have been raised by our tenants’ association, in FRAs of both 2010 and 2016 and Arnold Dix’s report. They would offer minimal smoke protection in the event of evacuation via the staircases as they are around 50 years old and have large gaps, cracked glass or doors that do not close, in addition to falling short of current standards of fire door design. Doors to individual dwellings have long been promised an upgrade, as they clearly fall short of fire safety standards.

On various occasions since 2010, the tenants’ association has raised the issue of trailing and non-boxed-in wires from Virgin Cable boxes on the communal balcony areas of Michael Cliffe House. These flammable cables run down the entire height of the building. For the most part, they are not properly boxed in, so there would be no protection from fire spread and smoke discharge, which would also prevent access to an escape route. This was not noted in the 2016 FRA – but is a risk and needs to be addressed.

We are in the process of having a new heating and hot water system installed at Michael Cliffe and Patrick Coman houses. Pipes have been run vertically through the landing floor slabs. Many have been boxed in with MDF board. Professor Dix’s report highlighted a lack of fire-stopping at the floor and ceiling levels. Likewise, other pipes have penetrated fire walls.

We forwarded the report to high-grade officers responsible for overseeing the works. Since then, the contractor has been busy applying fire stopping sealant (including cutting sections out of MDF board where pipes have already been boxed in).

We fear that had we not been fortunate enough to have access to Prof Dix’s report, all the pipes would have been boxed in, we would have been none the wiser about the lack of sealing and tenants would have been at risk. We want to know if similar failing in terms of pipe penetration through walls and floor slabs on other estates may have occurred.

Prof Dix suggests it is possible that residents may have breached fire walls in their flats and that it would be sensible for FRAs to include inspection of the interior fire walls of flats.

False ceilings in landing areas outside tenants’ flats have an increasing range of electrical and plumbing installations being added. As this is in the emergency egress passage we are extremely worried about the potential fire risk that this entails.

The issue of combustible materials outside residents’ flats has been highlighted in FRA reports of 2010 and 2016. No systematic process has been applied to deal with this so the problem persists. We want to know how the council is going to address this,

FRAs consider the flats on our tall blocks to be “general needs” housing so don’t consider the number of residents that might have problems in walking down the stairs of our high-rise blocks. We have significant numbers of elderly, young and disabled people living on our estate. We support the suggestion in Prof Dix’s report that it is essential that the council develops a practical evacuation plan for residents of Michael Cliffe and Patrick Coman houses.

The recommendation made by Judge Frances Kirkham at the inquest of the Lakanal House fire regarding sprinklers should be applied immediately in Islington’s high-rise blocks. There is no excuse for not going ahead with this immediately.

RICHARD LARCOMBE
Chair, Finsbury Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association