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For almost four decades, we have been taught to see public spending as a bad thing; ruthless economising as a virtue. We have come to know the price of everything and the value of nothing…and have ended with the funeral pyre of Grenfell Tower.
Three days after the night of Wednesday 14 June, I still haven’t written anything about Grenfell Tower. I’ve been trying to process the tragedy emotionally and intellectually. Even the pronoun jars. This is – or should be – all about the pain and anger felt by the victims of the tower block fire. Those feelings are shared by many but have been appropriated by a few to fit their existing worldviews, to serve pre-existing agenda. In the meantime, it seems every journalist has become an expert, every pundit has their opinion.
I do know a bit about social housing but I’m certainly not an expert on all the issues raised by Grenfell Tower. This is an attempt to look at some of the questions raised and to query some of the responses already emerging.
The first and most important questions are without doubt technical. The flammability of the cladding has already been criticised but, beyond that, we need to look at the ‘compartmentalisation’ behind and around it which is supposed to isolate and contain any outbreak of fire. It failed disastrously at Grenfell Tower.
The predominant British model of passive fire protection (using means which prevent the spread of fire, rather than sprinkler systems and the like which extinguish it) is a perfectly sound one but, by God, it has to work. Why didn’t it at Grenfell?
This takes us to building standards and fire regulations. There’s a consensus they need updating and a strong belief that Government has resisted that for reasons of cost-cutting and convenience. We need to know how these standards and regulations are being applied and we have to ensure that those whose job it is to inspect and enforce have all the resources and authority they need.
This is not an issue about tower blocks – which can be as safe as any other form of building. We must resist those who are using Grenfell to attack tower blocks more generally. Tower blocks provide decent homes for many thousands. The image of Grenfell’s burnt hulk will be used as some dystopic cipher for high-rise failure and the notion that tower block living is to be despised. The truth is that tower blocks, including council built ones, are back in fashion and many social housing tenants are being displaced from blocks in desirable London postcodes.
The tower in 2011 (c) Inigma, Wikimapia
But there’s something more and we’ve seen it powerfully on our TV screens for days. Grenfell Tower was home to a community. Families, friends, neighbours together and all, of course, intimately connected – cared for and about – to others in our wider community. Can this awful event please put an end to the demonising stereotypes so frequently and so crudely applied to our fellow citizens who live in social housing?
Grenfell Tower also tells us little about the inherent design and build quality of tower blocks as a whole. The sometime failure of system-building methods was devastatingly exposed in the Ronan Point disaster of May 1968. Grenfell may yet be its equivalent for the glitzy cladding refurbs which have become so prevalent. Here it seems near certain that it is the tower’s recent renovation that is culpable for the loss of life which followed.
And then there are those who are using the disaster to condemn social housing more generally. There’s room for informed discussion about housing types and models. There should be no room for any attack on the single form of housing provision offering secure and genuinely affordable homes to those who need them most.
A second set of questions revolves around management and accountability. The block’s landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) has come under enormous criticism, most powerfully from the unofficial tenants’ Grenfell Action Group. Its criticisms of the recent refurbishment and tenants’ safety fears were ignored – with the consequences we now know all too well.
Criticism of impersonal and unaccountable landlords is common enough (and probably more prevalent in the private sector, let’s remember) but, here, it’s being applied to the new registered social landlords that have largely replaced council housing departments since the 1980s. The Kensington and Chelsea TMO was formed, uniquely, by a borough-wide transfer of housing – 9700 homes in all – from the Conservative-controlled council in 1996. It doesn’t conform well to the generally more bottom-up model that TMO’s were supposed to represent.
The irony is that the new landlords were a reaction to the Council bureaucracies which had previously managed social housing and were promoted by advocates as more responsive and more representative. Often, they were. I’m not going to comment on Kensington and Chelsea – I don’t have the information I need – but a general criticism of any given system of housing management is probably unhelpful. Frankly, council control could be good or bad. What counts in every case are forms of genuine accountability and clear and open lines of communication. Let’s remember that when it comes to their housing, tenants are the experts.
Thirdly, and underlying everything said so far here and elsewhere, comes MONEY. For almost four decades, we have been taught to see public spending as a bad thing; ruthless economising as a virtue. We have come to know the price of everything and the value of nothing…and have ended with the funeral pyre of Grenfell Tower.
Every one of the criticisms made above is essentially about cost – about how much or how little we as a nation are prepared to spend on the health and well-being of our fellow citizens. Public investment enriches lives; here it would have saved them. The best memorial to all those who have lost their lives in Grenfell is that we as a nation choose collectively to invest in safe and secure public housing for all who need it.
Municipal Dreams 
A careful and considered assessment of the problem.
Thank you for this piece. I feel unable to comment at this moment. I am glad you have done. “Almost four decades ago…” I wrote this piece which might be of historic interest http://johnmckean.eu/wp-content/uploads/McKean_1979-Rise-and-Fall-of-Towers.pdf
I’m reading it at the moment. With reference to City of Towers which by implication you refer to, do you by any chance have a fair copy of it please? Mine is damaged and incomplete.
Thank you for this thoughtful contribution to this difficult subject. Your final point is, in my view, the most important. The notion that public spending as a negative has become the default position, virtually across the political spectrum. Until we (and I speak here as a Canadian, but the British discourse I am familiar with looks remarkably familiar to me) re-acquaint ourselves with the concept of the “greater good” and commit to acting on this, I fear that we are going to see more terrible, and avoidable tragedies, such as what we saw at Grenfell Tower.
I agree with the forgoing comments and applaud your balanced reaction to this terrible diaster. Ultimately the previous commenter is right- it’s all about the relative value we place on the ‘greater good’ and society’s role- nay responsibility- to invest wisely and effectively to achieve this.
Reblogged this on Old School Garden.
This must have been so hard for you to write, the emotions are raw and the shock still with us. But you have succeeded in giving us an eloquent, moving and informative piece about this disaster which should never have happened. Measured, balanced but with the message very clear. Thank you so much.
“This takes us to building standards and fire regulations. There’s a consensus they need updating and a strong belief that Government has resisted that for reasons of cost-cutting and convenience.”
The reason why Building Regulations have not been updated is neither cost-cutting nor convenience, but a deeply held belief by the present government that regulation of business of any sort is inherently wrong. Such a belief is wholly irrational and denies all history and experience.
This is a very good and enlightening post. I agree about the view on cutting spending being seen as a virtue. Any spending has been seen as wasteful and leaders want to just cut, cut, cut to fix nations deficit without thinking of the consequences.
Nice piece! I wrote something similar too – it truly is saddening.
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Thank you for that – and can I also thank you for raising the issue of building inspections – who carries them out and what their powers are..
I feel that there are other things which are not being said – this should not just be about municipal blocks. I suspect many of us are aware that residents in private blocks are frequently not ‘the rich’ and are sometimes battling with the results of faulty construction methods and materials.
Excellent Piece of work Well done it says everything no more need be said. We just need this May Government to fall and then a proper Housing Policy which properly accounts and is responsive to Social Housing Needs . At the end of the day neither TMO’s or Housing associations work Everything should remain within Local authorities as they were when the First Labour Government was elected in 1945. Your most pertinent point about Public Housing being bad and cutting is the best policy ie Death and destruction shows how consecutive Tory administrations are slowly destroying people Lets be rid of them once and for all.
Laurence
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A very welcome, well-reasoned view. Although it’s difficult at the moment when the tragedy is so raw, cool heads are going to be needed to sift through the evidence to arrive at solutions.
I tend to agree that it’s a symptom of a general attitude to regulation, quality and resourcing in building. Sadly, I doubt that it’s confined to the public sector or one political view.
Having procured buildings myself, I’ve been struck by the relentless “cost management” approach which project managers impose, leaving architects and others marginalised. Innovation in new products and techniques is vital, but reluctance to regulate, privatisation and fragmentation of building control and scarce resources creates vulnerability. I thought we had a BRE and regulation the envy of the world. Sadly, that now seems a complacent view.
Hi Municipal. Please please can we have a proper debate on this, let’s not lose this thread. Grenfell is in my constituency and we are all heartbroken, but need informed discussion like this, not what is taking place elsewhere. Emma DC
Here in the US, we can’t build a three-story building without sprinklers and two fire-rated means of access. Some places require sprinklers in free-standing houses. And all large buildings are required to have building-wide alarm systems, and to have them monitored professionally on a regular basis. We Americans are not a particularly careful people, and we grumble much more than our cousins across the pond. And God knows we have a crazy fear of government expenditure. In short, we’re nothing at all like Swedes, Danes, and other lucky people to whom common sense comes naturally. So when even we require ourselves to build fire-safe buildings, surely British councils and housing associations can do the same. That said, we haven’t always been as safety-conscious as we are, and lots of our older buildings are still unsafe by our modern standards. Upgrading them is expensive, and they haven’t all been upgraded. But we’re working on it. The twelve-story tower block near my house got sprinklers last year, – about time for a building with more than 300 elderly residents, most of them over 80.
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Thank you for this. I have reblogged it. My own thoughts on the investigation are very similar to yours – see https://colinrtalbot.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/why-did-grenfell-happen-its-probably-simple-and-complicated/ .
Please note especially the longer comment about the (privatised) Building Research Establishment.
I am hoping to post a very illuminating note from a former AAIB Inspector shortly. Thanks again.
Colin
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Thank you for this!
It would be interesting to look at statistics relating to fires in ‘social housing’. I couldn’t begin to imagine whether fires would be more or less likely there but, since they are frequently tragic they ought to planned for and heavily guarded against. I am aware that residents of Grenfell have said forcefully that they were anxious about fire risk, and raised that issue repeatedly with the TMO and the local authority, but were ignored. It has also been said that the building was clad at the request of those more affluent locals who felt the block demeaned the area, and not as a ‘gift’ of improvement from the rich to the poor. I have a phrase which has been going through my head since the evening this fire was first reported: ‘rights not charity’, meaning that tenants right to a safe housing experience and to a certain quality of life ought to be encapsulated in legislation, and that governments required to provide contingency funding to ensure that this could be guaranteed.I also feel that, rather than receiving lots of creditable but ill-directed cast-offs from the more fortunate, there needed to be a better plan. It was Armed Forces Day recently, and we are all aware that, in the event of war, the funds would be found at whatever cost. My contention would be that the self same expectation of contingency should extend to social housing, and that this aim should be prioritised above tax breaks for those earning beyond mean levels. In wartime, generally speaking, the poor are left to fend for themselves also
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in an otherwise excellent piece you misunderstand the role of KCTMO. It is not an HA/RSL It is legally RBKC’s Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO). There was no stock transfer. Grenfell Tower & other properties remain council owned.
KCTMO was created in 1996 to copper fasten tenant/resident control of local council housing, at a time when RBKC seemed less than interested in housing management & was feared to be toying with bulk transfer to an HA. Surely a major question for any inquiry is why KCTMO, which seemed to start so well, has fallen so low.
Thanks for your comment. I’m aware I simplified management issues a bit in the post. I believe KCTMO became an ALMO in 2002 in order to access Decent Homes funding. As you say, the stock remains council-owned.
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