Mayor praises council’s ‘transparency’ post-Grenfell – despite blocking release of old fire safety checks
Mayor Philip Glanville (left) spoke about the Grenfell Tower fire
Mayor Philip Glanville has praised the council’s “commitment to transparency” in the wake of the Grenfell fire – despite its refusing to release old Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) for Hackney’s tower blocks to the public.
It comes after the mayor apologised for incorrectly telling residents on the day of the fire that all FRAs for Hackney’s 181 high-rises were “up-to-date”.
In a speech on Thursday – seen by the Citizen – at the magazine Social Housing’s annual conference, Mayor Glanville said carrying out new FRAs for all council buildings and sharing fire safety information with the public was “crucial to reassure residents rightly worried from what they saw happen in Kensington”.
He added: “That’s why we’re taking the unprecedented step of publishing all 1,800 Fire Risk Assessments online so residents can look at them for themselves.
“They’re not perfect, and have thrown up a range of questions from residents, colleagues and the press – but this commitment to transparency is crucial if the people I represent are to have confidence in our work.”
However, Hackney Council is refusing to publish FRAs conducted before Grenfell for scrutiny – reversing an earlier pledge – and has rejected the Citizen‘s Freedom of Information request for the documents.
Hackney Council is blocking release of fire safety documents
The council is also refusing to provide its Red-Amber-Green fire safety ratings for Hackney’s schools, saying they are “not intended for public use”, and only released a report on school cladding after a Freedom of Information request.
In his speech Mayor Glanville said the council is waiting for the government’s Public Inquiry into Grenfell and the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety to help inform its next steps.
“Should we retrospectively fit sprinklers to all our tower blocks? Do the front doors in all of our homes meet modern building regulations?”, said the mayor.
“What other factors led to the fire at Grenfell that could have wide-ranging implications for the way we manage and maintain our homes?”
Currently only two of Hackney’s 181 tower blocks have sprinklers. The council has said it will retrofit sprinklers if recommended by the London Fire Brigade, Fire Risk Assessors or the council’s independent fire safety advisers.
Mayor Glanville also spoke about the cost of fire safety work in Hackney, where 44 per cent of homes are council-owned, one of the highest proportions in the country.
He criticised the impact of government cuts on fire safety, adding: “We should not be forced to choose between the safety and quality of our tenants’ homes.”
“We will of course complete any fire safety work that is necessary to ensure the safety of our residents,” he said. “But we cannot, and will not, be forced to choose between that and fixing the wider housing crisis.”
The mayor urged the government to commit to funding fire safety work nationally and establish a new independent institute for fire safety regulation.
It is worth noting that Hackney Council putting these assessments online is certainly a step forward that other councils have not taken. The Hackney Lib Dems are calling for this to remain the policy going forward, so every annual risk assessment is uploaded for residents to review.
The council needs to go further and extend this to other public buildings like schools and it is a sensible suggestion from the Hackney Citizen to make school RAG ratings available for parents to see.
But there has been a tendency for Hackney Council to forget transparency when it comes to hard questions that they may not wish to answer. This shows a misunderstanding of the whole purpose of being open and transparent with residents on safety levels, which is the ability to scrutinise and to call out those in power if they find the levels unsatisfactory.
Many residents of Grenfell described being ignored by their council and this should be an exercise in Hackney trying to avoid that by honestly addressing concerns even when it may be uncomfortable to do so.
It is not just an exercise in dumping risk assessments online then moving on, it’s about building trust by sharing info, fixing failures that come out from the assessments and being honest about the need to improve.
So far Hackney Council have been obstructive when they think they might be open to criticism.
That council believe they “own” data which we the citizens pay for, but the council works for us and are funded by us. As it is not possible to judge how well they are doing if they keep secret the basis for their decisions this secrecy is whats known as “a cover up”. It means they’re not doing very well and they need to hide something of this we can be sure.
The Mayor feels that such data is secret, even in the wake of Grenfell. It shows how deep the culture of condescension and secrecy is in Hackney. This is shameful. We must challenge this as it is unsafe – no one can claim in the wake of Grenfell that we can take it on trust that councils and others will do the right thing and act to make homes safe.
Do these people live in tower blocks themselves? Do they not share the same concerns?
The council regulates health and safety issues in the private sector, e.g.: food hygiene certificates in restaurants and cafes. Thet certificate must be displayed – no matter how damning it is – our council enforces this – and we benefit from it as such public awareness drives up standards. There is a direct parallel – and therefor a hypocrisy – that the council’s own stewardship of health and safety where it runs facilities – should remain secret.
Please keep up the pressure on the council to become transparent – it is in everyone’s interest. The unfair, self-serving instinct of secrecy must end.
Cafes in England don’t have to display food hygiene certificates:
https://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/hygiene-rating-schemes/ratings-find-out-more-en/fhrs
LBH unclear on whether they require display of their rating, so this may not be the best illustration, thank you for taking the time to point this out. :
“We inspect businesses and give them a rating of 0-5 to show how closely they meet food hygiene law standards. Food businesses are also given a sticker, which should be displayed on the premises.”
https://www.hackney.gov.uk/food-hygiene-rating
You don’t say how you view the council keeping their own safety record concerning tower blocks secret in light of Grenfell.
Much of the signage on our estate (De Beauvoir) is so inconsistent or confusing that visitors struggle to find their way round. We dread to think how people unfamiliar with the buildings would find their way out safely in the case of an emergency, where people would be stressed and visibility may be limited. We’ve been asking them to resolve this for years. The TRA have tried to help but these things need to be done by trained professionals with proper resources. Instead they leave if for TRAs to ‘fight for it’ instead of ‘partnering’ the TRA. Eg. 2 out of 3 of the 18 floor blocks have the important information for fire crews displayed clearly in a high visibility sign at the entrance, the other block has nothing at all. The door numbering and block names are so confusingly arranged in some parts, delivery people, health visitors etc get lost looking for flats. It takes a new estate officer (of which we have a regular turn over) months to learn their way around and even then they seem oblivious to some of the more serious repairs needed, like broken pipes causing widespread flooding and leaks, lifts out of service for weeks at a time, relatively newly fitted fire doors (by Lakehouse) which don’t close properly etc etc. We go on walkabouts with HoDs, we show them these things and then it all gets deferred to the big refurbishment (we’ve been promised for 10 years but never happens. EG. A few years ago it was ‘1 touch’, now its ‘Better Estates’ which recently got pushed back 36 months). Meanwhile they want to infill the estate with 100 unaffordable properties with only a cursory consultation.