“ Surely just yet more doomed–to–fail low cost, high rise housing? Surely the huge numbers of such buildings springing up everywhere will soon be a national scandal and tragedy as they were decades ago? These structures are never safe and the high expenditure to maintain them and the living standards of their residents in perpetuity is simply unaffordable.
The fire in student accommodation in Bolton this month will be blamed on badly designed insulation as will be another that destroyed a nearly new affordable housing block on the Hamptons Estate in south London in September. The common factor in all the fires and structural failures in similar housing is that buildings built tall and cheaply will almost inevitably have potentially lethal flaws in their construction, use and maintenance. In mixed estates it always the homes with the lowest cost and rent that have the lowest maintenance and the worst problems.
There are 60,000 people in the UK living in homes with the same issues as Grenfell Tower. Some of these buildings will be stripped of their insulation and then be demolished in the near future. Some will have new cladding installed which, in untested theory, removes the risk.
There are 1,600 buildings still standing with the structural problems of Ronan Point which partially collapsed spectacularly in 1968. All of these buildings are high rise and 200 are tower blocks over 20 storeys. Unbelievably some were built since that date, the rest stand with the addition of strange brackets and struts and, above all, wishful thinking.
With the High Barnet proposals I can predict at least some of the possible issues.
Firstly structural failure from inadequate pile foundations under an off–the–peg building system failing to resist lateral movement due to challenging ground conditions.
Secondly poorly designed and executed fire proofing. Perhaps in the insulation of the shell of the buildings, and/or more likely inadequate fire and smoke proofing of access for people and utilities from apartments to the inside of structures.
Thirdly inadequate provision of emergency egress with only one stairwell currently proposed for each building and inadequate design, maintenance and use of smoke and fire resistant doors across access corridors.
In the real world off an architect’s computer screen hese issues are unavoidable except perhaps the number of stairwells.
These are just the safety issues. The threshold for the built environment in low cost high rise housing is incredible low. Apartments, rooms, windows and communal spaces both inside and outside are as small as envisaged that can be rented to the desperate. Each block as shown at the revised consultation had one lift. Any breakdown or even regular service sees people struggling with shopping and children up six or seven flights of stairs. This would not be a good place to live from day one. It would get worse rapidly.
Perhaps the most striking thing I recall from visiting such buildings decades ago, first as a young engineer and then journalist, was the combination of poor construction imposing horrendous living conditions on residents and seemingly a lack of means or will from the property’s administrators to do anything effective about them. Even the basic snagging expected in any new building never really happened.
As the years go by people living in apartments become part of families trapped and trying to survive in the same tiny homes as the estates disintegrate around them. Every attempt at improvement entails more holes in the already flimsy fabric of the buildings. Meanwhile in the absence of parking these residents will be cut off from friends, family and carers unless they happen to live on the Northern Line or one of the haphazardly routed local buses.
30 years ago we wouldn’t be having this conversation, the problems of such buildings were emblazoned on the front pages of local newspapers and on bad days as tragedies related in national media. The predecessors of councillors and GLA members who are now saying we have to build tall apartment blocks would be marvelling at the shortness of political and public memory. ”