Good catch, although to be clear the £23.5m extra cuts were already in train, not new cuts. Not sure which Mayor and Assembly agreed them in the first place.
Plasterboard=sheetrock=wallboard=(colloq: ‘GypRoc’) - is the standard material for making walls -either skimmed with a coat of plaster, or sometimes, installed as a prefinished material and just covered with wallpaper,
But what I’m wondering here is whether some other material was used - because it was cheaper or lighter - such as board materials made of polystyrene with paper or plastic facing, or something more durable in use in a rented flat - such as PVC wall cladding materials.
From experience, I have visited a couple of made-over concrete tower blocks where the hallways and stairwells were internally clad with melamine-faced boards of some sort - probably chipboard or MDF - a bit like this - and probably because they’re easier to keep clean. I wouldn’t expect that sort of cladding inside a flat, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if something other than (and maybe not so fireproof as) gypsum board was used.
Yes. I’m not saying that Johnson is blameless here, just that his changes have passed review and that there was an opportunity to correct them if they had been found wanting.
Yes, normal furnishings are entirely enough to cause that sort of damage. It’s nothing mysterious. That’s what the interior of a home looks like after a serious fire.
The fact that these apartments are all basically just concrete boxes turns them into ovens. Or crematoriums.
Another data point. Tonight’s Panorama programme on BBC 1 said that the firefighters called to the scene at the fire of origin had put that fire out and were leaving when they realised that it was spreading.
Video footage of the moment one fire crew approached and first saw the block, from the BBC website.
When you have the firies asking ‘How the fuck does that happen??’ you know you have a very strange situation underway.
My god, I still feel sick looking at those pics. 
Built in 1975. I was thinking maybe 1965. I understand that the tower was safe in the original form when completed, but still, I don’t think it would have met standards in other cities in 1975 ??? Specifically, a residential tower with no sprinkler system and only one exit?? I can imagine single-service-shaft office buildings, and buildings with no fire sprinklers, but not both together. Do such residential towers exist anywhere else?
I hate to wade into politics I’m not that familiar with, but I am struggling to reconcile the stories and images I’m seeing with the notion that cutbacks to *firefighting *budgets had anything to do with it.
Grenfell was a deathtrap and it went up like a goddamn bonfire. No fire brigade on the planet could have stopped that.
Maybe it is a reference to cutting back on inspections and code enforcement?
The cut backs on inspections and enforcement over the last decade are very well known.
I am aware of them because HSE staff are members of the same union as me, and I have been at conference after conference where these cutbacks have been decried.
Inspections have been reduced to ‘light touch’ where inspector, if they come in at all, merely examine the paperwork.
https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/hse/business-plan-reveals-further-budget-cuts
http://www.hazards.org/votetodie/ishsefinished.htm
I could go on and on, there is a huge amount of stuff out there relating to reduced inspections, but much worse is the reduction in the number and severity of sanctions, along with obstacles placed in the way of those seeking redress through the courts.
Here is the position 5 years ago
and that article predicts the situation we find ourselves in as of 2017
https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/regulation/local-authority-inspections-decline-201516
You cannot say you were not warned, and yet some of you voted for the current administration - well suck on that, and also realise that this is only the tip of the iceberg, I have been actively campaigning against safety cut backs for many years, our prisons are objectively far more dangerous places than they were 10 years ago - with record numbers of suicides, murders and assaults, along with 30% reductions in staff.
The number of safety related claims has dropped in the last few years by over 70%, and this was all called ‘reduction of red tape’ without once ever presenting any evidence that such a reduction would be beneficial to the economy - sure there are anecdotal accounts, but these sources are always incredibly heavily biased.
https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/enforcement/balance-of-power
The main bodies for inspections fall to
- local authorities - which cover food premises, care homes and other public sector activity,
2)fire brigades which inspect, and enforce and investigate - along with fire premises approvals - and
3)HSE which also takes an over-arching view of safety.
There are a number of other organisations that inspect and enforce in specific fields, such as prisons, quarries, mines,railways there also those who approve materials in various industries.
The reality is that such inspections and enforcements are always carried out by public sector workers in the UK - and this sector has faced the greatest cutbacks.
Some public sector budgets were ‘protected’ or rather were frozen, but inflation means that these have also undergone significant cuts, along with new grant distribution formula - which is another way of applying cuts.
So here is the situation, all the public sector service providers have certain legal obligations on the role they play - which leads to costs that cannot be readily defrayed or passed to someone else - this leaves little flexibility in terms of budgets because the money is effectively committed by Acts of Parliament to ensuring the service is provided - so the cuts must all come from the non-protected parts of the budget- and these are hit disproportionally hard.
Safety inspections and enforcement are rather like having an army in waiting - you cut back and cut back, until the day it is needed and then it is too late.
So you might ask the more political question of why the cuts were determined to be necessary in the first place - especially whilst we also know that the top 1% of our population are controlling an increasing share in percentage terms of our national wealth.
Here is a great example, this is effectively the Tory hand trapped in the till, its the smoking gun, its the evidence you need
Common sense restored to Health and Safety - GOV.UK
Next time you vote, and you notice that maybe you are paying a little less tax, remember that a couple of quidlets in your hand are not worth much if you are paying off student loans, paying to subsidise the welfare of your elderly parents, and the increasing demands of local rail companies that somehow seem exempt from the rules of price inflation, or if you lose your life in a safety incident that could have been prevented by better enforcement and inspection - remember that when you hear of ministers talking of a ‘bonfire of red tape’
That would make a great deal of sense, though, of course, it is up to fire departments to some extent how to spend their money.
I know there are many local cases around here where fire departments are literally bankrupting their own towns with bloated budgets that can’t, politically speaking, be reduced, but fire inspections and prevention aren’t being done any more than they ever were; the fire departments prefer to spend their money on firefighters and shiny vehicles, not inspections.
That said, the importance of real inspections, with real consequences for noncompliance, can’t be overemphasized.
Point of order: tax has gone up - to nearly 35% of GDP - under the Tories, not down. You may think that your tax has decreased, but it hasn’t. And Hammond has indicated tax will likely rise further. And they wonder why they lost their majority.
Finally a bit of better news
The daily fail commentators are already going mad, " they’re getting more than us!"
But, good. Good.
Neighbours can stay together, and the children can keep their schools.
They won’t be getting the full posh experience, I’ve seen the obligatory social housing in private developments before, but they’ll have homes.
I don’t know how the council will rehome the rest, but it’s a good start.
I’m trying very hard not to consider the effect of the Grenfell fire should another election be called in short order, given that Labour only won Kensington by 20 votes and given how many likely Labour voters are now dead or displaced.
I hate thinking like this. And I hate even more thinking that there are almost certainly some people who are quietly happy about the unintended political windfall this has generated for their side.
I would have thought it would go the other way: that people may be more likely to vote against the Tories because of the perceived link between this fire and “cutting red tape”?
Yeah, if I supported the Tories I would think that this would either make no difference or hurt my side. No matter the effects in Kensington, there is no upside elsewhere, and potential downside.
The Guardian are reporting that Grenfell Tower was officially inspected - no self-certification here.
“…working for the council…”
How is that NOT self certification? The inspector is on my payroll, but I’m not self certifying? It sounds more like they wanted to keep their jobs/please the boss, than they didn’t know about the materials.
Are the inspectors also protected from any liability?
Yes, that’s not an independent inspection at all.
I don’t think cuts to fire services actually impacted the effects of this fire, actually, but it’s well worth bringing them up because this fire - and the others that have been publicised more because of it - show that the fire service really is still needed. One of the key arguments for cutting it was that it wasn’t needed as much any more and this gives the lie to that. Also Boris talked about fire deaths being down 50% but neglected to mention that deaths from smoke inhalation had been reclassified as not fire-related deaths.
FWIW, there’s a lot in the papes about the “luxury” flats the residents are being given.
Most articles give the impression that these are extra flats that have been sold at cost by a kindly developer just for these residents. That’s not true - those flats were always earmarked as affordable housing because new developments are all supposed to have a proportion of homes in that category. All that’s happened is that the Grenfell residents have jumped to the top of the queue like residents who’ve been decanted (forced out of their homes after the govt decides to sell the building) usually do and the govt is handing over a bit of cash to get the flats ready for occupation sooner than they would have been.
Because the flats were always earmarked as affordable they won’t be laid out in the same way as the luxury ones. The rooms will be smaller, they won’t come with fitted kitchens or any luxury features as standard (unless some of the govt money is going to pay for kitchens - the residents won’t have kitchen equipment to bring with them), they almost certainly won’t have balconies, and they won’t have access to the gym, pool, concierge etc that the private residents do (fair enough), which is why the residents won’t be paying the same service charges. That’s how it always works in these developments. The social housing residents often even have their own “poor door” entrance.
Some of the private residents are complaining about people getting these flats for “free” (though they will be paying rent) but the thing is these private developments have huge problems with absent owners buying them purely as investments. Those empty flats then pay no council tax and that causes enormous problems for the local area. Obviously the absentee owners don’t care about that but the ones who actually live there should.
They probably will be better homes than the ones the Grenfell residents have lost (except that they might be smaller - 70s blocks usually had good room sizes) but they’ve paid a huge price for that. I mean, some of the people moving in will have lost family members and all of them will have lost every sentimental item they owned and gained horrible nightmares in exchange. They’re not actually “lucky.”