Hackney Council shells out £15.6 million on fire safety consultants

Hackney Council made several pledges to improve fire safety across its housing estates following the 2017 Grenfell disaster, which killed 72 people. Photograph: London Borough of Hackney

Hackney Council is set to pay consultants over £15m to find out the scale of fire hazards in buildings across its housing estates.

Last Monday (20 April) the council awarded two £7.8m contracts to Frankham Risk Management and Airey Miller Ltd to carry out a “substantial” fire safety review of high-rise and mid-rise blocks throughout the borough.

The consultancy fees, spread over four years, will be entirely funded by government grants under the Cladding Safety Scheme (CSS). An £11m deal was first agreed in July 2025, but the council has now agreed to pay an extra £4.4m to speed up procurement so it can meet the government’s strict timeline to secure the grant funding to deliver necessary fire safety works by 2029.

Changes to building safety regulations have meant local authorities must carry out new fire safety inspections on buildings, especially those built or refurbished with “potentially combustible materials” in their cladding, insulation, balconies, brickwork and other areas.

After the 2017 Grenfell tragedy, the council reported that none of its buildings had the same flammable Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) used in Grenfell Tower.

However, it has removed cladding from high-rise buildings across four estates to bring them in line with updated fire safety standards.

In 2019 the council evacuated 41 families from a block in Hoxton after it identified “incorrect insulation” which did not meet safety requirements. The council at the time said it would take legal action against Willmott Dixon’s housing arm over the failures.

Two years later, residents in Morris Blitz House learned their building did not meet an “adequate” safety standard after a mortgage lender’s survey found aluminium cladding and gas cupboards with cavity walls made of chipboard, apparently insulated with polystyrene.

Following the Grenfell fire, the Town Hall said it would install 17,000 new doors across its housing portfolio that could withstand fire for 30 minutes.

However, this target was revised downwards after the new Building Safety Regulations that came into force in 2022 stated that only those high-rise blocks standing at seven storeys or higher needed their doors replaced.

The council says it plans to have replaced roughly 7,500 doors by 2028 to meet fire safety regulations.

Since May 2018 the council says it has also installed pipe systems to support firefighters, known as ‘dry risers’, outside more than 300 buildings.