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> The government have put together a fund of £1bn for non-ACM cladding remediation, expecting that to cover ~600 buildings, but already over 2,700 buildings hav

by suvelx 6y ago

> The government have put together a fund of £1bn for non-ACM cladding remediation, expecting that to cover ~600 buildings, but already over 2,700 buildings have applied and the estimated cost UK-wide is upwards of £15bn. Non-ACM over 18m tall. Shorter buildings (the majority) are up shits creek too. There's also a 30M fund for waking-watch relief... Which at 150k per alarm, you can get 200 alarms. > The House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the bill stating that leaseholders won’t be made to pay (note: not forcing the tax payer to pay, just ensuring the leaseholders don’t) and the Housing Committee (namely MP Robert Jenrick) are rejecting this on the basis that the tax payer shouldn’t foot the bill. AFAIK It was initially rejected because it was worded in such a way that would make freeholders liable for other fire-safety things such as failsafe latches. Prioritizing freeholders paying out hundreds of pounds every decade over bankrupting thousands if not millions of people. It's a farce. The building has industry paid millions in donations to the Conservative party since Grenfell. And at every turn despite parroting "leaseholders should not pay" it has been obvious that they really meant "should pay". Meanwhile, in a fit of hypocrisy, Jenrick has been campaigning for a (Labuor) council to fix a bridge "because they own it".

Retric 6y ago
> Shorter buildings (the majority) are up shits creek too. Under ~18m tall building are much easier to escape from in a fire and thus have different fire safety rules. People can normally exit the building quickly. Worst case jumping from the 3-5th story is likely to result in serious injury but is often survivable. Start talking 6+ floor things get exponentially worse with every additional floor increasing the risks. This is of course an arbitrary line, I would have a lower limit but the tradeoffs are complicated.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  > Worst case jumping from the 3-5th story is likely to result in serious injury but is often survivable. A brief web search suggests to me that about 50% of people who fall from 15 meters (approx 4th floor) will die. Those are awful odds, and most survivers of falls from that height probably aren't landing on the sort of pavement you might expect to be surrounding a high-rise building. And how many of the survivers ever walk again? How many can even feed themselves again? Seriously, 50% is worse than even russian roulette, a 'game' generally recognized as suicidal.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Again, it’s not how I would write these regulations. That said, regulators are working with real world data. The expectation is for people to be able to exit the building or at least get to a lower floor, because that’s the usual case. Failing that ladders can generally evacuate people from the 5th floor. Jumping is very much considered a rare last resort, but is more controlled than people simply falling that distance. Further, first responders are more likely to be onsite which again increases the odds. As an example of 4 people jumping from the 5th floor and only one being sent to the hospital. While everyone else in the building evacuated normally. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-jumps-fifth-floor-balcony-escape-apartment-fire-a7048756.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-jumps... So, while there are a lot of relevant regulations building height is a meaningful distinction. PS: On an 18m tall building. The 1st floor is ~0 meters off the ground, the 2 floor is 3 meters up, 4th floor is ~12m up and 5th floor is thus 15m and the roof is at 18m. A window adds 1m but someone dangling removes ~2m based on their height. As in dangling from the 2nd story window is ~2m fall and a 15th floor balcony would be a 13m drop vs ~14m from a window. (Using G, 1, 2, 3, 4 is the same numbers just offset by 1.)
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      > The expectation is for people to be able to exit the building or at least get to a lower floor, because that’s the usual case. That's the expectation in America surely, but is it in the UK? In America people are told to get the fuck out of buildings as fast as they can when the fire alarm goes off, but in the UK people are told to stay inside high rise buildings, apparently because they have fewer and narrower staircases. Highrise buildings in the UK are evidently not designed to be escapable. I think that should be the real scandal. The cladding is bad and effects hundreds of buildings, but how many UK highrise buildings have inadaquate stairways? Tens of thousands? More? The reason this isn't part of the scandal is probably because the scope of the problem is too enormous. I encourage you to look up the timeline of events inside Grenfell; if evacuation began when the fire was called in, there would have been ample time for complete evacuation. 14 minutes elapsed between the initial call and fire spreading out the window of the origin flat. People were only reported trapped by smoke ~40 minutes after the fire was called in. These people were killed by the UK's policy of staying put inside buildings on fire. Anyway, I've seen some videos of people falling a fraction of 15 meters onto pavement and dying. It seems depraved to expect somebody even on the third floor to jump onto pavement.
- suvelx 6y ago
  This doesn't change the fact that regardless of height, the residents in those buildings are having hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt forced onto them because of a retroactive law change. And While Non-ACM cladding isn't illegal, it's still being treated as a risk for 'low-rise' buildings. It's still resulting in surveyors deeming the property unsafe, and it's still resulting in the leaseholders (not owners) of those buildings having to pay millions to 'remediate' it. This coupled with decades of deregulation, poor construction and minimal oversight has resulted in over 5% of the market suffering from the same problems, ACM, Non-ACM, 50 meters tall, or 5 meters tall. And nearly all of it is driven by the banks. The government has only banned ACM cladding, The banks have done the rest. The banks don't give a shit that your odds of jump out your window are 50%. The banks just want to make sure the property they've given you a loan against doesn't burn down when you die from the fall.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Interesting, by banks do you mean insurance companies as well or are banks specifically at the short of this issue?
    - suvelx 6y ago
      Mostly banks. Insurance has a part to play. My understanding is: In 2018 the government banned ACM cladding. Shortly afterwards RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) developed the "External Wall System" or "EWS-1" form. Which is a means of assessing the risk of cladding (external wall systems) to a building. This was not a legal requirement. It is merely a tool to assess risk. It does not even specify the credentials required to issue one, just "suitably experienced". Surveyors carrying out an EWS-1 form would effectively be on the hook for any damages if they made the wrong call, This ended up being reflected in their insurance, so most if not all would perform a full top-to-toe inside-out fire-safety survey. These full surveys have resulted in other defects in most buildings being found. Combustible material used in balconies, insufficient fire and smoke barriers between dwellings, faulty or incorrectly installed fire doors. Note These 'defects' aren't necessarily illegal or against code, they just push the perceived risk of the building past the surveyors acceptable risk. Banks, being horribly risk-adverse made an EWS-1 a requirement for loans on buildings over 18 meters. Somebody in Parliament said something along the lines of "All buildings should be safe". Banks then started making the EWS-1 a requirement for all loans of multi-tenant dwellings. But someone is always responsible for ensuring a building is 'safe'. A poor EWS-1 result means someone has to make it safe. This someone is generally the buildings Management Company, or the Freeholder (who is entitled to recover those costs from the leaseholders).
pasttense01 6y ago
"Shorter buildings (the majority) are up shits creek too." So you want to ban single family houses made of wood?
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Just those clad in napalm I would think...

by suvelx 6y ago

Retric 6y ago

> Shorter buildings (the majority) are up shits creek too. Under ~18m tall building are much easier to escape from in a fire and thus have different fire safety rules. People can normally exit the building quickly. Worst case jumping from the 3-5th story is likely to result in serious injury but is often survivable. Start talking 6+ floor things get exponentially worse with every additional floor increasing the risks. This is of course an arbitrary line, I would have a lower limit but the tradeoffs are complicated.

bigbubba 6y ago
> Worst case jumping from the 3-5th story is likely to result in serious injury but is often survivable. A brief web search suggests to me that about 50% of people who fall from 15 meters (approx 4th floor) will die. Those are awful odds, and most survivers of falls from that height probably aren't landing on the sort of pavement you might expect to be surrounding a high-rise building. And how many of the survivers ever walk again? How many can even feed themselves again? Seriously, 50% is worse than even russian roulette, a 'game' generally recognized as suicidal.
- Retric 6y ago
  Again, it’s not how I would write these regulations. That said, regulators are working with real world data. The expectation is for people to be able to exit the building or at least get to a lower floor, because that’s the usual case. Failing that ladders can generally evacuate people from the 5th floor. Jumping is very much considered a rare last resort, but is more controlled than people simply falling that distance. Further, first responders are more likely to be onsite which again increases the odds. As an example of 4 people jumping from the 5th floor and only one being sent to the hospital. While everyone else in the building evacuated normally. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-jumps-fifth-floor-balcony-escape-apartment-fire-a7048756.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-jumps... So, while there are a lot of relevant regulations building height is a meaningful distinction. PS: On an 18m tall building. The 1st floor is ~0 meters off the ground, the 2 floor is 3 meters up, 4th floor is ~12m up and 5th floor is thus 15m and the roof is at 18m. A window adds 1m but someone dangling removes ~2m based on their height. As in dangling from the 2nd story window is ~2m fall and a 15th floor balcony would be a 13m drop vs ~14m from a window. (Using G, 1, 2, 3, 4 is the same numbers just offset by 1.)
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    > The expectation is for people to be able to exit the building or at least get to a lower floor, because that’s the usual case. That's the expectation in America surely, but is it in the UK? In America people are told to get the fuck out of buildings as fast as they can when the fire alarm goes off, but in the UK people are told to stay inside high rise buildings, apparently because they have fewer and narrower staircases. Highrise buildings in the UK are evidently not designed to be escapable. I think that should be the real scandal. The cladding is bad and effects hundreds of buildings, but how many UK highrise buildings have inadaquate stairways? Tens of thousands? More? The reason this isn't part of the scandal is probably because the scope of the problem is too enormous. I encourage you to look up the timeline of events inside Grenfell; if evacuation began when the fire was called in, there would have been ample time for complete evacuation. 14 minutes elapsed between the initial call and fire spreading out the window of the origin flat. People were only reported trapped by smoke ~40 minutes after the fire was called in. These people were killed by the UK's policy of staying put inside buildings on fire. Anyway, I've seen some videos of people falling a fraction of 15 meters onto pavement and dying. It seems depraved to expect somebody even on the third floor to jump onto pavement.
suvelx 6y ago
This doesn't change the fact that regardless of height, the residents in those buildings are having hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt forced onto them because of a retroactive law change. And While Non-ACM cladding isn't illegal, it's still being treated as a risk for 'low-rise' buildings. It's still resulting in surveyors deeming the property unsafe, and it's still resulting in the leaseholders (not owners) of those buildings having to pay millions to 'remediate' it. This coupled with decades of deregulation, poor construction and minimal oversight has resulted in over 5% of the market suffering from the same problems, ACM, Non-ACM, 50 meters tall, or 5 meters tall. And nearly all of it is driven by the banks. The government has only banned ACM cladding, The banks have done the rest. The banks don't give a shit that your odds of jump out your window are 50%. The banks just want to make sure the property they've given you a loan against doesn't burn down when you die from the fall.
- Retric 6y ago
  Interesting, by banks do you mean insurance companies as well or are banks specifically at the short of this issue?
  - suvelx 6y ago
    Mostly banks. Insurance has a part to play. My understanding is: In 2018 the government banned ACM cladding. Shortly afterwards RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) developed the "External Wall System" or "EWS-1" form. Which is a means of assessing the risk of cladding (external wall systems) to a building. This was not a legal requirement. It is merely a tool to assess risk. It does not even specify the credentials required to issue one, just "suitably experienced". Surveyors carrying out an EWS-1 form would effectively be on the hook for any damages if they made the wrong call, This ended up being reflected in their insurance, so most if not all would perform a full top-to-toe inside-out fire-safety survey. These full surveys have resulted in other defects in most buildings being found. Combustible material used in balconies, insufficient fire and smoke barriers between dwellings, faulty or incorrectly installed fire doors. Note These 'defects' aren't necessarily illegal or against code, they just push the perceived risk of the building past the surveyors acceptable risk. Banks, being horribly risk-adverse made an EWS-1 a requirement for loans on buildings over 18 meters. Somebody in Parliament said something along the lines of "All buildings should be safe". Banks then started making the EWS-1 a requirement for all loans of multi-tenant dwellings. But someone is always responsible for ensuring a building is 'safe'. A poor EWS-1 result means someone has to make it safe. This someone is generally the buildings Management Company, or the Freeholder (who is entitled to recover those costs from the leaseholders).

pasttense01 6y ago

"Shorter buildings (the majority) are up shits creek too." So you want to ban single family houses made of wood?

bigbubba 6y ago
Just those clad in napalm I would think...