Grenfell flats fire

[elguapo4]

How great that there’s at least one young woman like this in the House of Commons

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1273930695510032384?s=21

Fuckin hell, that's powerful.

[Nefertiti2]

How great that there’s at least one young woman like this in the House of Commons

https://twitter.com/zarahsultana/status/1273930695510032384?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

Three years ago

The Conservatives ignored repeated urgently warnings.

Boasted of how they'd cut red tape.

Defunded the fire brigade,

held an in quiry which only looked at the fire brigade's role

tonight

https://twitter.com/theresa_may/status/1272068071637778433?s=20

https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1272277926990557186?s=20

[Lobachevsky]

thats different for the threshold for "works" which is in the £3m to £4m range.

the 140k threshold is services

[Lang Spoon]

OJEU threshold is only 139,000 Euro. How cheap exactly was the work?

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/Robert_Booth/status/1234950085815021569?s=20

Sounes said that, at the request of the tower’s landlord, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), he deferred charging some fees so the threshold that would have obliged the client on the council-owned block to issue an open tender was not met.

Under EU procurement rules, known as OJEU, which applied at the time, public works above a certain threshold have to be put out to open tender. Studio E has already admitted it would not have been selected for the job in competition because it lacked experience in high-rise housing or over-cladding works.

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/chris_a_w/status/1225428628873367554?s=21[/URL]

the fix is on

[Nefertiti2]

I think an enquiry into the causes of Grenfell would have made a difference. Thats why it didn't happen

still all OK now

https://twitter.com/LiamC0nnell/status/1223628888967974913?s=20

[Snake Plissken]

the Tories prevented this coming out before the election

Given the complete lack of caring about Johnson taking a mobile phone in order to avoid looking at a picture of a sick child on a hospital trolley, I doubt it would have made a difference.

[Nefertiti2]

Peter Apps Twitter feed is a must

[URL]https://twitter.com/peteapps/status/1222835020462727172?s=21[/URL]

the Tories prevented this coming out before the election

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/PeteApps/status/1222505850599804930?s=20

[Nefertiti2]

And the enquiry rigged by the tories tto ensure that the only people held to account before the election were the people who ran into the building, not the people who knowingly covered it in flammable material, or those who approved them or ignored repeated warnings about fire safety.

hell the leading Conservative who told the elected representative querying some of his cuts to the fire service to get stuffed is now the Prime Minisiter.

[NHH]

Those people who made the decision to use this cladding along with those who made the regulations less stringent should be brought to justice.

If the people who took the decision to use the cladding knew it was unsafe, then they're clearly culpable. If the problem was that UK regulators has cleared it as safe when it wasn't, then the issue is that the regulators and the regulatory process was fucked; I don't see how people can be brought to justice for using Uk-approved building materials

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/PeteApps/status/1222133208524914688?s=20

[Antepli Ejderha]

Arconic, the US industrial conglomerate that made the cladding panels, knew in 2011 they were too flammable for use across Europe, but believed it could still “work with regulators who are not as restrictive”.

Those people who made the decision to use this cladding along with those who made the regulations less stringent should be brought to justice.

The quote is from this article.

Grenfell Tower inquiry: what we learned as second phase begins

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...droidApp_Gmail

[Antepli Ejderha]

She took money from the company but there's no conflict of interest. Wtf.

[Guy Profumo]

No conflict of interest.

[Gangster Octopus]

Resignation°

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

What's a RMC?

Residents Management Company.

[Sporting]

What's a RMC?

[Lobachevsky]

Taking the big London Housing Associations as an example. There are a dozen or so main players. each has give or take 200 buildings over 18 m high and 300 between 11 & 18 metres.

taking the over 18m buildings between them they manage in excess of 2500 buildings each with about 100 flats in them. That is a quarter of a million households.

in round numbers a third of these are tenants a third are shared owners and a third are leaseholders.

of the buildings

a third are OK.
A third fully owned ny the HAs and have problems of one sort or another
a third are on long leases - leased by the HA from either a private owner or a residents management company. These are the highest risk buildings in many cases.

in one example that I know of the HA has made provision of £40m to deal with the problem third they own.
they estimate a further £60m to fix the buildings they lease but do not own 5he freehold on.

these are initial figures and are likely to cost more.

to put this in perspective the UK govt has set aside £600 m as a relief fund for the whole UK. One HA estimates it’s bill as one sixth of that sum.

they are all in a quandary as to who should cover all the costs and how that should be done.

in the existing high risk buildings 24 hour on site waking watch services are being put in place. This sort of service costs circa £100k upwards per building per annum.

Add in the big city council landlords and you have a major drain on all future funds in the social housing sector.

and that’s only looking at the biggest buildings.

in the private sector rectification is going to be even more complex. Many buildings are owned by large pension funds and foreign investors. These have plenty of funds but aren’t in the business to manage and risk large capital sums for no return.

many other buildings are owned by RMCs - these have no meaningful assets and have to raise any capital from the members (leaseholders). The new leases sold in London over the past 10 years have mostly been to BTR investors a significant majority of whom are oversees investors. It wasn’t in their business plan to lash out £20k per property on fire safety work.

Added to which many of the skilled construction workers seem to have opted to return home and there was a massive skills shortage anyway.

this means there will be massive inflation in the costs of fire safety expertise and a long rationed queue to get any works done.

[Lobachevsky]

Away from the particulars of Grendel there are estimated to be 12000 blocks of flats with some kind of defective cladding or problematic fire stopping.

For the past 30 years the UK construction industry has prioritised warmth and insulation over fireproofing which now seems tragically poor.

to start with even the most basic things - most of the fire doors on flat front doors failed the new tests so pretty much all need replacing across the UK. That’s about £500 a go.

wooden balcony’s. several fires have recently spread by jumping up the balconies. These need to go.

that horrible larch cladding that was in fashion. Wood burns so it has to go.

Nearly every refurbished building has to be checked as the builders will have ruined fire compartmentalisation between floors by putting new pipe work through them and not sealing them properly.

every single large landlord will need to do a complete audit and intrusive investigations into the guts of every building. Just the investigation of a building could cost £50k. Fixing a 100 flat building can easily be £2m if all the cladding needs to come off. And the ACM buildings are just a drop in the ocean.
this is gonna take 10 to 15 years to put right ang quite a few billions.

The alternative is is to take a chance.

The mortgage market is collapsing on many buildings as a prolonged haggle goes on about how to certificate that a building is safe and to agree who pays for the ones that aren’t.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Grenfell survivors and bereaved still fighting frustrating battles

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...droidApp_Gmail

More news. It's scandalous what's happening to these poor people.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Boris Johnson's pick to help lead Grenfell inquiry linked to cladding firm

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...droidApp_Gmail

I wish I were shocked.

[Gangster Octopus]

I'm almost surprised that you asked that...