There are lessons to be learned, and its not easy to admit for local authorities or even governments.
Since the introduction of high rise accommodation regulations have changed, materials have changed and expectations changed.
So Blocks built and designed in 1970's would have one set of criteria which at the time was deemed correct. However since then testing has got better, materials have changed and cosmetic alterations taken place which have moved faster than the regulations and testing regimes.
The easy thing to make political capital is to blame the party currently in charge when in fact if there is to be a blame then its should be spread over many years of accumulated regulation changes which have not always been applied.
Scare mongering is always a good way of getting attention especially to false information, once the idea is out there it ferments and festers and becomes an urban truth. David Lammy with his story about more deaths than reported actually came from non residents talking to residents (could this be the same rent a mob for McDonald?), I could also mention there was a party with over 40 people in one of the flats where candles were used, or so I was told by a friend who got it from someone who knew someone who was there! Corbyn blames the lack of checks on the government cuts to the fire serve when in fact it was Labour who changed the regulations so they could be carried out by "responsible people" - there was not necessity to have a fire service certificate. So in one fell swoop councils were responsible for checking their own safety as gust houses and hotels were placed in charge of ensuring they met with perceived safety regulations and also fails to recognise that Labour where responsible for the building of many of these high rise apartment blocks..
Actually if anything Grenfell Tower has shown that the regulations have become an dreadful tangle This should be a wake up call and any cross party wrangling should stop, concentrating instead on making safe that which has become less protected, looking after those who have been made homeless.
Perhaps I have not been clear. Being in the construction game and a licenced builder with a bricklaying trade background, I have new material sent to me all the time regarding changes in construction and fire related materials.
Once upon a time, fire walls were either constructed from concrete or brick. Now with the advent of modern fire rated materials, more timber is used in apartment block construction.
I'll cut is short, the new so called fire rated material is only as good as it's installation and what it is fixed to. Call me old fashioned, biased whatever. But I have seen enough of what others do in my life time not to trust either of the latter.
I myself recently just sold a home which I added a 2 bed annexed unit too. Yes, it would have been cheaper for me to use the modern fire rated system between. But after looking at it, investigating it and the so called "laboratory testing". Knowing that collapsing and burning material can break through what I would call it, "flimsy" fire wall construction.
Call me old fashioned, and sceptical again I went with ye old brick. Because I like to sleep at night.
This is a new 6 storey apartment block which was under construction. Would you move into and live on top of a stack of firewood? I had the timber industry all the time try to push me into using more timber in unit construction....I sent them not this vid, but that of another set of timber units under construction going up in seconds and a worker waiting to be rescued. I never heard from them again.
http://abc7ny.com/news/monstrous-fire-engulfs-building-in-downtown-raleigh/1805101/
I'm not being alarmist, but the building industry is also susceptible to keeping costs down. Causing a flood of new "fire rated products" to be used, which really yet, have not had the test of time. My kind of testing.
