Grenfell Tower

[John52]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-02 10:43 AM

 

If a land owner/house builder makes a massive profit from the transformation of agricultural land into building land,

 

That only happens because planning permission makes the land worth so much more.

If planning permission wasn't so restricted and anyone could get it without political infliuence, there would be more building land and competition would bring prices down.

They couldn't charge those prices and make those profits if there was more building land available - somebody else would be building on it and competing for their customers!

But we only have free enterprise and competition when it suits them.

What we have is rentier capitalism.

[John52]

Maybe its just a coincidence all this so called 'free enterprise' government's interventions in the housing market lead to an increase in prices. *-)

Usually at the expense of the taxpayer. >:-)

Like the latest - stamp duty holiday to lead us out of the recession.

Who needs trade and industry when we can make a living flipping the same crummy houses backwards and forwards to each other at ever increasing prices with borrowed money *-)

Deemed so important by the Tories they have left a loophole in the lockdown big enough to drive a coach and horses through - go anywhere for a 'house viewing'

[Tracker]

John52 - 2021-02-02 11:18 AM

Like the latest - stamp duty holiday to lead us out of the recession.

'

 

It will no doubt bring you great joy to learn that I am one of the lucky ones to benefit from a huge cash saving of SD when we relocated upmarket recently!!

 

It's not often I get 'owt for nowt - so many thanks to my kindly Uncles, Rishi and Boris! No doubt they will get their revenge with tax hikes once Covid is over - someone has to pay for it and I guess those of us who are not wealthy but are comfortable will be the first victims!!

 

For the record I too believe that the Government, successive governments in fact, have acted shamefully by penalising people who honestly bought flats that complied with all governemt building control regulations at that time. It hardly encourages people to try and improve their own lives and raise their own standards when with the benefit of hingsight Government reneages on it's own responsibilities.

[Brian Kirby]

So, in summary, there is no quick fix, and a lot of whataboutery. It is not that simple, is it?

 

The onus is clearly on the government for making poorly thought through legislation that everyone erecting buildings is compelled to follow or be penalised.

John speaks of the injustice of taxing the poor, but has no real solution for how the compensate those building owners (including lessees) who find themselves, through no fault of their own, living with mortgages on what have become valueless property, to remain in which they have to pay vastly increased service charges for 24 hour fire marshals, and hugely inflated insurance premiums. A number of them have now been made bankrupt. Is there justice in that?

Curtain raiser cavils about transferring the cost to building owners as liable to raise the cost of property, to the disadvantage of all prospective buyers - with which I agree. So, there is no simple, short term, universally fair, path to extracting money from those actually responsible for the current mess that is Building Regulations.

These are not semi-detached, self-build houses. They are substantial, multi-occupancy, blocks of flats exceeding 18 metres in height (on a rule of thumb, exceeding 6 storeys.

 

They will not have been built by "multi-billionaire landlords" but by development companies which will, if they have done what is normal, set up subsidiary companies for the single purpose of constructing that one development. To finance that they will have borrowed. The lender will have limited his liability to the financial risks. They will have commissioned and paid their designers and contractors, and then marketed the development. No-one will have liabilities beyond the value of their individual contribution. The professionals will have PII, but all will be limited in value.

 

Once the flats are sold, the leases will have been sold to a pension fund or similar, and the management revenues to some other building management company. So, the developer takes his profit, and then closes the development company. Try tracing the liabilities back through the courts to get to anyone who has sufficient assets to meet the costs of the remedial works, and the only winners will b the defending barristers. Quick solution? Think decades! How could that possibly be to the advantage of anyone currently "owning" such a flat? Cheaper for the poor? Where are the legal costs to come from? Pro-bono work? Who actually pays for that?

 

Did anyone actually read Curtain-Raiser's link here: https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/the-paper-trail-the-failure-of-building-regulations-55445 ? And I mean really wade through the lot? :-)

 

It is a phenomenal piece of almost forensic investigative journalism, dating from March 2018, and is I suspect by now in need of some updating. What it sets out is a damning indictment of how successive governments, in pursuit of cheaper, quicker, routes to faster turnaround of construction projects, have introduced change to a system that worked. The system was not perfect, and many would have agreed that it was in need of streamlining, but the requirements were relatively clear.

 

To commence building, you first had to submit detailed proposals for what you intended building for approval, and although you could start before approval was granted, if you did so you worked entirely at risk and could be required, with attendant penalties, to dig it up or knock it down. The wise waited for the approval.

 

As construction progressed periodic inspections would be made and deficiencies pointed out which, if not rectified, would result in the final approval certificate being withheld. No certificate, no occupation. The wise rectified what was at fault as the work progressed.

 

The bottleneck in the process was invariably that approval could only be given by Local Authorities and, as there were deliberately and progressively starved of funds, their building control departments, especially if large scale development proposals gained planning approval, were hit with more applications than they could process within the required time. Developers, many of whom made political donations, complained of the unnecessary red tape to governments. So, the desire to de-regulate and speed things up was born.

 

The solution adopted was to use the private sector by allowing private companies to undertake the approval process, by registering as Approved Inspectors (AIs). Unlike the local authority, these companies could be anywhere in the country, so relationships between them and the developers could grow across an number of projects. They were not required to charge a fixed fee, so unlike with a local authority, developers could bargain over the cost. Not being public employees, their managements were answerable only to themselves for the risks they elected to take. Their public liability was reduced by government parking the enforcement liability for non-compliant construction back onto the local authority in whose jurisdiction the development lay. So, you now had AIs who were highly mobile, who would bargain over costs, who would displease their clients if they refused approval, and who could earn more by getting more business, acting as the gatekeepers of building safety. Rather than handling approval as a single incident, the process was allowed to spill over into construction, with approvals being given as work progressed. Faster starts on site leading to earlier completions. Developer heaven! It was a market, and in markets people cut corners, and strain to see ways around impediments rather than insisting that the impediment was there for a reason.

 

I well remember a discussion I once had with a retired Senior Home Office Fire Inspector who had become a consultant on fire and related matters. We were discussing a particular regulation that I was having trouble making sense of. He looked at me, smiled, and said "it really isn't that complicated you know, all you need to do is read the regulation itself, and then decide what it means".

 

In the light of that simple advice, now try the following. :-D

 

"B4(1) The external walls of the building shall adequately resist the spread of fire over the walls and from one building to another, having regard to the height, use and position of the building."

 

What does it mean? The objective of part B of the Building Regs. is external fire spread, with specific reference to "Building other than Dwellinghouses". I.e. among others, blocks of flats. The reason for the regulation is public safety. The basis is passive safety: i.e. safety that does not rely on anything more than inherent fire resistance of the building to create the individual dwellings as a series of compartments separated from each other by fire resisting construction. This compartmentalisation means that there is no need for mass evacuations (which potentially obstruct fire fighting access), because a fire in one flat will not threaten the safety of those in other flats. It also has implications for the number of, construction and ventilation of, escape routes. That is the basis on which Grenfell Tower, in common with many other such blocks, was designed and built. The danger is that if construction of the external wall would allow fire to spread externally: a) a it could spread over the face of the building and break into adjoining flats, b) that in so doing it would threaten the safety of other residents, and c) that this would make fire fighting additionally difficult and hazardous.

 

Beyond those considerations are that blocks of flats, unlike office etc. buildings are residences, presenting particular risks at night when residents will be asleep and may awaken frightened and confused.

 

The application of flammable cladding to such a building, designed on the basis of passive fire control, was to destroy the whole basis on which it had been designed. Then go back to B4 above, and consider whether even "materials of limited combustibility", might be appropriate to use. Now ask how they type of cladding and insulation actually installed could have been deemed to fall into even that inadequate category, and how such could be contemplated as meeting the regulation as stated above.

 

And yet, it seems the same exactly decision has been reach on so many other building across the country. It hardly reflects regulatory clarity, does it? Who makes and amends the regulations? Government. Who is at fault? Government? Not any particular government, but a succession of governments, of all political flavours. Did they intend that? No. Who gave them that power? All of us who elected them over the past 30 or more years. Who must pay? All of us. It is inescapable, is it not? However the costs are diced and sliced, in one way or another, they will end up, through the way the economy works, by falling on us all. The only thing that we can be do is to try to shield those least able to pay from bearing the highest relative cost.

 

Sorry this is so long, but I didn't have the time for the short version! :-D

[John52]

Tracker - 2021-02-02 12:53 PM

with the benefit of hingsight

 

Its not hindsight!!!!

 

Try telling that to the Grenfell residents who had been screaming about this for years before it happened!!!!

 

Past Governments brought in regulations that would have stopped this

The Tory Government tore them up in Eric Pickles 'Bonfire of Red Tape' without bothering or caring to find out why they were introduced. >:-)

 

Now the only 'solution' is to take more money from poor innocent taxpayers. And if past experience is anything to go by they will secretly spaff it away to their cronies like they did with PPE contracts, and fraudsters like the Royal Tory Borough gave it to people claiming to have lived in one of their flats that didn't even exist!!!

[John52]

Brian Kirby - 2021-02-02 1:21 PM

The only thing that we can be do is to try to shield those least able to pay from bearing the highest relative cost.

 

Taxes are taken from everyone - including those least able to pay.

So even if it was done properly it wouldn't be fair.

... and if it was done like the Government did PPE contracts >:-)

... and the Royal Tory Borough dished our money out to fraudsters without even looking at their own records to see if the flat being claimed for even existed ...

[colin]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-02 8:34 AM

 

 

 

Now to where we disagree! Planning permission is not delaying the construction of new properties, the industry is sitting on enough sites to build between 600,000 and 800,000 houses, it is not in their interests to build these, even if they had the capacity, as over supply in the housing market would suppress prices.

 

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/landbanking-construction-companies-still-hoarding-land/

 

 

That was 18 months ago, our land agent now estimates around 1 million houses are sitting in land banks.

Around here, only small or individual builders struggle to get permission, for larger estates click your fingers and permission is granted, our local council have a policy of 'build, build, build.'

[Brian Kirby]

John52 - 2021-02-02 4:40 PM

Brian Kirby - 2021-02-02 1:21 PM

The only thing that we can be do is to try to shield those least able to pay from bearing the highest relative cost.

Taxes are taken from everyone - including those least able to pay.

So even if it was done properly it wouldn't be fair.

... and if it was done like the Government did PPE contracts >:-)

... and the Royal Tory Borough dished our money out to fraudsters without even looking at their own records to see if the flat being claimed for even existed ...

Well yes but...................... As I said above, what, realistically, is the alternative?

 

Those with mortgages on these blighted flats should be the first consideration. Mostly young, they have lost substantial sums of money at the beginnings of their lives. Especially those who have been bankrupted. The flats are unsaleable, so the lenders have no possibility of repossessing to recover the debt, which will therefore go on accumulating interest and growing, but will remain the liability of the borrower. The borrowers will acquire unfavourable credit ratings. They will have lost their deposits.

 

They may still have other debts such as student loans and or debts from furniture etc purchases. They may now have furniture that they have no-where to store. All that, and only in their 30's.

 

It is a huge injustice that no rational person could have foreseen. The natural assumption on contemplating buying a house or flat is that it will at least be legally compliant - even if it turns out not to have been that well put together! Surveyors, even doing full surveys, will have had no particular reason to check whether the cladding system complied with regulations, especially as the structure, external walls, and common areas, usually remain in the landlord's ownership and are excluded from the leasehold. How on earth could buyers have known what they were getting? As things now stand they are almost certainly poorer than the poor you refer to. They need rapid assistance, and all this benighted government can do is wring its hands and twiddle its thumbs.

 

Let the government borrow the money. Let them assume responsibility for the buildings. Then let them commence the remedial work having identified suitable materials. At the very least, this would provide work during the Covid recovery period. And above all, let them learn the lesson of unquestioning deregulation! The reason these regulations exist is because experience has proved them necessary, not merely so as to annoy builders/developers. Those guilty of creating the mess can be identified and censured, or sued, in due course.

 

To an earlier point, yes, there are good tradespeople in the construction industry. Some manage to survive, but many are defeated by having to compete for work with the mediocre and the crooks. Most construction work is procured through competitive tendering. For that reason, most contracts are awarded to someone who has either priced in desperation to gain the work, has made a mistake, or has combed the tender documents for mistakes that will entitle them to claim for additional work. For all that, if properly conducted, it is the fairest way to achieve value for money for the client.

 

But, whoever has made the mistake and got the job, will begin looking for ways to regain the lost profit by identifying corners that can beneficially be cut, or by substituting inferior materials or working methods. Bills are invariably paid late, with individual tradespeople and suppliers kept waiting for payment on the promise of future work/orders.

 

The rosy cheeked, honest, friendly tradesman can only exist if he works for small, local, builders who trade on quality, or by working on reputation directly for for local businesses or home-owners. Major commercial contracts are a completely different, dog eat dog, ballgame in which the innocent get destroyed. The design consultants have to check work continually to verify that it is properly executed, and it is normal for an independent Clerk of Works to be employed as an employer's permanent site based inspector to maintain a watch on everything. Nothing is allowed to be paid for before it has been checked and certified.

 

Multi-story residential buildings are usually outside the scope of the house-builders because they are too complex and risky, so they tend to be executed by offshoots of the big commercial developers. But building is merely a meal ticket for them, not a labour of love. They put their own people on site to haggle over the cost of everything as it is built. As long as it looks the business for prospective buyers, its quality will be a secondary consideration. Substitutions for specified goods and materials are common. This seems to be part of what happened on Grenfell.

[teflon2]

I think we need Veronica because as far as I understand it multiple owner residences are leasehold and the building is the responsibility of the landlord. Sorry Veronica we overlapped. :$

[John52]

Brian Kirby - 2021-02-02 6:24 PM

Nothing is allowed to be paid for before it has been checked and certified.

That was the same in supermarket buying departments, and all the other places I have worked.

Which makes it all the more inexplicable how this Government paid £billions upfront to new inexperienced suppliers / Tory Party donors / cronies, for unusable or non-existent PPE

and you want to put them in charge of handing out compensation for these flats *-)

Often the best course of action is no action, unfair as it is, because this Government invariably makes it worse. :-S

[CurtainRaiser]

Don't forget it took the Housing Secretary less than twenty four hours to intervene and get approval for Tory donor Richard Desmond's one billion pound development.

 

Yet four years after Grenfell there are 56,000 people still living in homes with dangerous cladding waiting for the government to act.

 

Robert Jenrick couldn't even be bothered to turn up to vote on it yesterday.

[Brian Kirby]

Funny thing, political dogma, isn't it?

[John52]

All the Tory MPs did as they were told and abstained.

Why do we need so many when there is not one left with any backbone

BoJo deselected them all :-S

[John52]

Well I suppose it was inevitable the poor innocent taxpayers would pay for the Government's reckless incompetence. Again.

But why do we have to have years of anguish, waste, and indecision before it happens?

Seem to have got the worst of both worlds. Again :-S

[Brian Kirby]

John52 - 2021-02-03 11:31 AM

Well I suppose it was inevitable the poor innocent taxpayers would pay for the Government's reckless incompetence. Again.

But why do we have to have years of anguish, waste, and indecision before it happens?

Seem to have got the worst of both worlds. Again :-S

That is a perfectly valid question, though it is not specific to Grenfell Tower, the thread subject. :-)

 

Ask who selects the parliamentary candidates and on what basis, and then who elects them. If good people are selected who appeal to a sufficiently broad spectrum of the electorate, they will get elected and we might all benefit. If extremists are selected they will be unlikely to get elected.

 

Where there is an identifiable political bias in a constituency, they would elect a chimpanzee (sorry chimps!) if their sacred party selected one. We need well grounded pragmatists as MPs, not narrowly factional dogmatists or unthinking party apparatchiks.

[Bulletguy]

 

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1356993598508720130

[CurtainRaiser]

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

[Bulletguy]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-09 7:04 PM

 

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

Typical UK........skimp, 'make do', and bodge when it comes to building for the proles. :-(

 

Deborah French told the public inquiry into the June 2017 west London blaze that Arconic could have sold a fire-retardant product.

 

But she said it saw the UK market as preferring a slightly cheaper version, albeit with a greater fire risk.

 

Giving evidence, Ms French, the company's UK sales manager, said a type of product called Reynobond PE panels were 4 to 5 euros cheaper per square metre than the fire-retardant version.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56000440

 

From The Times (paywalled so have posted in full).

 

Grenfell sales manager told not to share fire safety details on cladding, inquiry hears

 

The sales executive who sold highly combustible cladding to Grenfell Tower was warned by managers not to share detailed information about the fire safety of products with customers, a public inquiry was told today.

 

Emails revealed at the Grenfell Tower inquiry show Deborah French, UK sales manager for the US company Arconic, asking in 2011 if she could forward technical documents on the differences between two cladding products to an engineering firm.

 

Her technical manager Claude Wehrle responded: “OH MY LORD!!! Where did you get that from??? For sure you’re NOT allowed to diffuse to the customer those documents.”

 

Wehrle told French that she should confine discussion to the different classifications for cladding panels with a polyethylene (PE) core and those with a fire retardant (FR) core.

 

The FR panels were 70 per cent mineral while the PE panels were 100 per cent organic, Wehrle wrote before adding: “As organic is the material that is going to burn in case of a fire, FR is better.”

 

Thousands of square metres of Arconic’s Reynobond PE panel was fitted to Grenfell Tower during a major refurbishment project.

 

The inquiry’s phase one report concluded the panels were a “source of fuel” for the fire in June 2017 — which killed 72 people — and the principal reason it spread so rapidly.

 

French is the first Arconic employee to appear as a witness before the inquiry. Others will follow including Claude Schmidt, chief executive of the firm’s European subsidiary which is based in Merxheim, France.

 

Richard Millett QC, lead counsel to the inquiry, confirmed that three former Arconic staff — including Wehrle — were refusing to give evidence.

 

Wehrle and Gwenaëlle Derrendinger who live in France, and Peter Froehlich, a German resident, claim they could be prosecuted under a rarely used French law if they testify at a foreign tribunal.

 

Millett said lawyers for Arconic and all its potential witnesses had initially claimed they could not give evidence or disclose documents because the 1968 French “blocking statute” prohibited participation in an overseas tribunal.

 

Arconic only handed over documents about its involvement with Grenfell in late 2019 when the Metropolitan Police, which is running a criminal investigation into the blaze, served a European investigation order. After Brexit, that power is no longer available to UK police forces.

 

Millett said the French authorities believed there was no legal obstacle to the witnesses giving evidence. The French embassy had issued a note verbale saying France shared the UK’s “desire for full light to be shed on that tragic fire”.

 

Millett added: “Each of these witnesses has been given a final chance to decide whether or not to come to give evidence to the inquiry. They still refuse to come to assist you, I regret to say. The refusal of these witnesses to give evidence is unreasonable.”

 

He said notices compelling attendance had been served on the “recalcitrant witnesses” but could not be enforced in France or Germany.

 

https://tinyurl.com/wge6ytxx

[John52]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-09 7:04 PM

 

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

 

So if we had really been ruled from Brussels instead of Westminster,

Grenfell couldn't have happened :-S

[CurtainRaiser]

John52 - 2021-02-10 6:09 AM

 

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-09 7:04 PM

 

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

 

So if we had really been ruled from Brussels instead of Westminster,

Grenfell couldn't have happened :-S

 

Indeed. I wonder if the forum's Professor of Mathematics will make the connection?

 

 

[John52]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-10 7:57 AM

 

John52 - 2021-02-10 6:09 AM

 

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-09 7:04 PM

 

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

 

So if we had really been ruled from Brussels instead of Westminster,

Grenfell couldn't have happened :-S

 

Indeed. I wonder if the forum's Professor of Mathematics will make the connection?

 

 

I guess he still believes we are hampered by a mountain of 'elf and safety' imposed on us from Brussels *-)

[John52]

So here it is

After 3 years of indecision anguish and waste, the inevitable.

Innocent taxpayers and future home buyers to be shafted again to compensate for the Government's reckless incompetence.

Whilst the stories feature the poorest leaseholders, how much more of our money will be given to fraudsters and wealthy freeholders.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/09/ministers-to-increase-financial-support-for-cladding-removal

.. and how much more bulls**t about the Government recovering the money from those responsible (i.e themselves)

[Brian Kirby]

Bulletguy - 2021-02-09 8:20 PM

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-09 7:04 PM

So today at the inquiry we find how lower UK building standards allowed the panels to be sold here that couldn't be sold in Europe. Bodes well for safety when other standards are watered down.

Typical UK........skimp, 'make do', and bodge when it comes to building for the proles. :-(

Deborah French told the public inquiry into the June 2017 west London blaze that Arconic could have sold a fire-retardant product.

 

But she said it saw the UK market as preferring a slightly cheaper version, albeit with a greater fire risk.

 

Giving evidence, Ms French, the company's UK sales manager, said a type of product called Reynobond PE panels were 4 to 5 euros cheaper per square metre than the fire-retardant version.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56000440.............................................

But don't lose sight of two important things. :-)

 

First, whatever was attached to Grenfell and all those other buildings with similar cladding, had to have been approved for use by someone (a Building Control Organisation (private Approved Inspector, or Local Authority Building Control department), and that someone will not have been the manufacturer.

 

Second, when assembling the contract for the building work, there will have been detailed specifications for the work, including the cladding and the insulation.

 

The builder, and through him all suppliers/sub-contractors he employs, will be contractually bound to comply with the terms of those specifications, which form part of his contract. It is not left to the manufacturer, the supplier, or the builder, to decide to supply alternative materials (whether or not cheaper) unless they have approval from their employer (or their employer's contract administrator). Doing so would be a fundamental breach of contract, and legally actionable - especially with a contract of such high value.

 

If Reynobond FR (or any other f/r grade cladding) had been specified, and the alternative Reynobond PE was proposed as an alternative, that change would have required formal approval as a contract variation, but also approval from the Building Control Organisation responsible for the original approval under Building Regs. No-one has yet suggested either was the case, so I would assume for now that what was was supplied was what was approved and specified. We'll just have to wait to see if someone else pops up to say that what was fixed wasn't what was approved or specified. If it wasn't, I bet that person will pop up just as soon as they can! :-)

 

Since no-one seems to have batted a contractual eyelid at that change, if change it was, then for now it points to a failure in original approval, the specification, site supervision, or the administration of the contract.

 

I'm not the slightest surprised that Arconic's sales manager was told to stay away from giving technical information. No-one with any sense ever deals with the sales reps when seeking information on technically complex materials - only with the technical reps. No technical rep, no sale! Why? Sales reps tend to be on sales based bonuses, so the pressure is on sales values, not on suitability of the product.

[CurtainRaiser]

Surprise

 

Cladding company donated £2,500,000 to Tory party and £50,000 to Doris's campaign

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/builders-grenfell-cladding-give-tories-2-5m-5c9gwvhrb

[Bulletguy]

CurtainRaiser - 2021-02-15 12:32 AM

 

Surprise

 

Cladding company donated £2,500,000 to Tory party and £50,000 to Doris's campaign

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/builders-grenfell-cladding-give-tories-2-5m-5c9gwvhrb

 

Good God. 8-)