“Making our buildings safe”– Eight comments
I am unsure how you make something safe which is already very safe, but that’s the title given to the document dated 18thApril 2021 from Stephen Lang, Chair of MQA-G. There are lots of comments one could make. Here are eight:
1. “You can’t put a price on safety”(p1) MQ is already very safe. A blog on this site examines this using national fire stats and finds one is statistically less likely to suffer a fire related fatality while living at MQ than the national average for such fatalities. In fact taking into account that MQ is post 1980 build and isn’t social housing its likely the risk is well under a half of the national average. Furthermore, the two big fires that have occurred at MQ were both contained within the flats concerned.
2. “A1 is future proof” (p2) Nothing is future proof. Above B2 and less than A1 is fine from most, if not all perspectives and is where most safe developments are. For MQ an A1 rating would entail large and unnecessary expenditure for tiny additional benefits compared to slightly lower classifications.
3. “not all lenders will lend on anything less than A1 certificates”(p2) To sell or buy you don’t need all lenders to lend on it – you just need one, but preferably at least several.
It seems there are already a large and growing number of lenders who are happy to lend on B1 properties with no problem including new builds such as Kidbrooke Village and others with B1 ratings and wooden balconies such as in these adverts, which have wooden balconies and have recently been sold.
4. “the fire engineer confirms that there is a risk of vertical flame spread from balcony to balcony”(p6). I have been unable to find any mention in the Hydrock report about verticalflame spread from balcony to balcony. P9 mentions “across” not up.
5. “..the current EWS1 form is valid for five years. We cannot make it go awayby repeating the process”(p9). The information in the Q&A on the RICS site says “they remain valid until a new EWS1 is issued”. Obviously an EWS1 can be replaced by a new one when something changes, whether this is the guidance on which it is based or the materials in the building. There would be a new EWS1 if the remediation work were undertaken even though this would be within five years of the current one. Why wouldn’t the same apply to a change in guidance?
6.“You can see some pretty spectacular balcony fires on the internet, and if there was a fire such as this it is possible the balcony above could catch fire too.” (p18) Lots of things are possible but are they likely? I have so far found six videos of spectacular balcony fires but I haven’t yet found one of it spreading to the balcony above. Furthermore, one MQ resident managed to burn a hole in their wooden balcony with an unattended disposable BBQ, but the decking didn’t ignite.
7. “A minority of residents are ‘determined to be dissatisfied’”(p1.) This seems a strange comment – is it called being “defensive aggressive”? People who are asked to pay large sums of money should ask questions, probe the answers and not be fobbed off with superficial or inaccurate information.
8. “There is no hidden agenda” (p1) … and if there was, would we be told? Doesn’t stating this, in itself raise a question as to what it might be?
btw Stephen Lang lives in a flat that only has aluminium panelled external walls and a terraced balcony about seven times the size of the average two bed flat’s balcony.
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Note: Views in this blog and on this site are the honest opinion of the author & are made available in the interest of residents at MQ.