FIre protection and prevention measures in high rise buildings post Grenfell House Fire

1. MSc Building Surveying
Nottingham Trent University
Research Proposal
Title
The effectiveness of current fire prevention and protection measures in
high rise residential buildings in the United Kingdom.
Dumisani Sibanda
1 June 2018

2. Abstract
Fire safety within high rise residential buildings is paramount to the protection
and preservation of life, but current United Kingdom government policies and
legislation do not seem to be at par with standards or recommendations
formulated by industry experts on fire safety methods in high rise residential
buildings.
The full throttle of investment and adaptation of fire safety measures in buildings
was pioneered in the late 1970s. “A high-rise building definition is a completed
and occupied structure for which the roof access level exceeds the maximum
height of rescue capability from the street level by the fire and rescue service”
(O'Hagan, John T. 1977).
In the past 60 years increased migration has resulted in a shortage of
accommodation. This increased migration catapulted the construction of high
rise residential buildings which have accommodated the lower-class citizens
and ethnic minority immigrants.
Despite the high number of people residing high in the sky in small building foot
print areas, the adequate policing of fire safety measures in the high rise
residential buildings has not been whole heartedly financed to improve fire
safety prevention and protection attitudes. The reasoning behind the latter
statement was that lessons seem not have been learned from previous fires in
tower blocks such as the Lakanal house fire, were recommendations were not
implemented.
Delays in reviewing, improving and implementing building regulations and
recommendations by industry regulatory bodies, shows that even though the
government formulates and funds policies for the entire country, this seems to
have fallen short when it comes to speedily making critical life safety decisions
for disadvantaged people’s needs.

3. This may be due to excessive cost of implementing such changes. It is this lack
of passion and speed to improve fire safety policies and legislation that has led
to Grenfell Tower fire in London.
The devastating fires both at Lakanal House and Grenfell Tower in London
highlights the critical importance of fire safety in high rise buildings and the need
for sustained vigilance when maintaining or refurbishing such buildings. High
rise buildings are special in comparison to houses or maisonettes where escape
from a fire can be achieved through jumping from a first-floor window. In a tower
with 21 storeys there is no safe platform to jump to, except to death. “High-rise
buildings have a greater risk of fire because of features such as great height,
complexity of structure, and diverse functions, and so on” (Hassanain, 2009).
The Lakanal house fire in 2009, killed six people. After that tragic incident the
government All-Party Parliamentary for Fire Safety and Rescue Group appealed
for the amendment of Approved document B of the Building Regulations
regarding fire safety to include the role both active and passive fire protection
measures such as sprinklers in fire suppression and improved
compartmentation and fire stopping of voids plus a review of cladding
standards.
According a publication titled, the architect’s journal, the Lakanal House fire
report queried the suitability and sufficiency of the fire risk assessment
methodology in place at that time.
It was noted that the review of that process led to the development of a system
called British Standard, PAS 79 for Fire Risk Assessments which tackled
queries surrounding the suitability and sufficiency of fire risk evaluation
measures.
In 2013 following the Lakanal House a coroner’s report recommended that the
government Department encourage providers of social housing in high rise
residential buildings to consider the retro fitting of sprinkler systems and also

4. called for a review and simplification of the guidance to the English and Welsh
Fire Safety Regulations.
Before the recent fire at Grenfell a large number of issues had been raised by
various industry bodies relating to fire safety and mainly the use of non-fire
rated flammable cladding systems in residential tower blocks.
Tower blocks have been used due to the post war demands for affordable
accommodation in the 1940s and 50s, this catalysed the construction of high-
rise purpose-built blocks of flats. In the 1960s, these high-rise blocks began to
dominate the skyline of most towns and cities across the country. It is this long
association with high rise residential buildings that the government should have
by now put in solid measures to ensure that fire safety prevention and
protection measures are always dynamic in high rise buildings.
Aims
1. To understand how current policy and legislation affects fire prevention and
protection measures.
2. To highlight the inadequacy of measures that the government has put in
place to prevent the loss of lives in high rise buildings since 2000.
3. To explore bottlenecks in current regulations that makes prevention of fire
less secure.
4. To briefly analyse the relationship between Lakanal House, Grenfell Tower
Fire incident and how government policy seems to be influenced by ethnicity
and social class.
Objectives
To examine the effectiveness of current fire safety policies as a tool for
preventing fires in high rise residential buildings.

5. To investigate if lessons were learned and adopted after the Lakanal house fire
and if this could have helped prevent the devastating fire that consumed the
Grenfell Tower.
Hypothesis
In the United Kingdom although reviews have been done after major high-rise
fires, government policy does not seem to be updated at a fast pace to prevent
further similar incidences.
The government has failed to speedily review and amend Approved document
B of the Buildings regulations. Also, recommendations from fire experts not
being implemented.
Checks on maintenance and refurbishment contractors working on high rise
residential buildings are not robust enough to help prevent breaches in
compartmentation, especially in hidden voids.
Literature Review
According to Newstatesman (2017, p. 1), council tenants are perceived to be
scroungers, obese people and smokers of illicit substances. It may be for this
reason that the residents repeated warnings to authorities, that the building was
unsafe were repeatedly and contemptuously ignored.
They residents had asked for an inquiry 18 months ago but due to being poor
they did not get one. They were powerless until they paid with their lives, hence
an inquiry has now been conducted, posthumously.
This study will be limited to high rise residential buildings in the United Kingdom
where highly devastating fires have led to lives being lost, communities being
broken and people being injured. A desktop study of this proposal will

6. concentrate on recent fires in Lakanal House, and also analyse the recent
review of the Grenfell Tower fire report authored by Dame Judith Hackitt in May
2018.
“High rise buildings pose significant problems to both the building occupants
and the firefighting agencies. Therefore, it is important that residential tower
blocks are afforded greater significance through effective fire-safety engineering
solutions, to prevent the occurrence of building fires in time” (Dechamps et al.,
2011).
There is a long history of rules and restrictions in place in England to lower the
risk of fires in buildings. In the aftermath of a disastrous fire in Southwark,
London, during 1212, a council of ‘reputable men’ established a series of conditions
that local buildings should meet to ensure safety at all times. These policies are
still recognisable today as the basic themes for fire safety concerns as they affect
building specifications. The Great Fire of London in 1666, the Rebuilding Acts
(1667 and 1670) set standards for new construction in London to be based on
stone instead of timber, with detailed requirements on the thickness of walls and
heights of rooms within a building.
Twinch (2017), said “after Lakanal House fire, I never thought I’d see this again,
but now I have”. This statement suggests that lessons were not learned from
previous high-rise building fires.
According to The Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order Legislation (2005), all
local authorities were encouraged to conduct fire risk assessments on all their
residential buildings. A chartered surveyor Walker (2013), an expert witness,
said “Southwark Council should have prioritised Lakanal House in Camberwell,
as it was high-risk". However, six people died in this Fire in 2009 because
recommendations of the fire service were not enforced as evidenced by the fact
that no valid fire risk assessment was in place when a fire broke out at Lakanal
House, claiming six lives. In high rise residential buildings evacuation

7. procedures should be constantly reviewed due to the potential for crowding and
slow movement in escape routes due to the increased building height and
because exit stairs do not normally increase in width as people traverse
downwards to evacuate. “However, stair shafts also represent one of the main
means by which smoke moves vertically” (Jin T, 2002). In addition, the time
taken by an occupant to descend a stairway significantly increases with the
height of the building, which increases the potential for smoke exposure.
The Royal Institute of British Architects called for a ban on flammable
cladding, as well as a requirement for water mist systems such sprinklers to
be retrofitted and a secondary means of escape for high-rise residential
buildings, however this has not been actioned.
The Fire Protection Association (2017), a think tank works with many UK
insurers, confirms that the current Building Regulations are not fit for purpose in
terms of current building refurbishment methods and material use.
Research Methodology
A qualitative methodology was conducted to achieve the research aim. The
literature review process started by looking into primary and secondary sources
of information. In order to achieve the objectives listed above, I will refer to two
case studies of building fires in high-rise residential buildings in England.
A desktop study of the high-profile fire disasters in tower blocks examines the
causes, attitudes and actions taken by authorities in putting measures in place
to prevent future tragedies.
Case Study 1, Lakanal House Fire
Fire initiated in flat 65 part of a 14-storey tower block built in 1959 housing 98
flats stretching almost 42m high. The building had been designed with escape
balconies reaching to an enclosed central staircase. The council had prior to the

8. event spent £3.5 million on fire safety refurbishment measures. The fire quickly
broke out of flat 65 ensuing smoke out the window and radiating heat to the flat
above in flat 79. One of the residents called the fire authorities and was advised
to remain inside the compartment flat because the building had a stay put policy
in place until some 28 minutes later when she was overcome from heat and
smoke. The principles of fire safety and firefighting in the UK are based on
containment of the fire within a compartment. The walls, floors ceilings and
doors are designed to contain fire within a flat for 30 to 60 minutes. Once a fire
is discovered the dweller in the flat of fire origin should leave the premises
immediately and raise the alarm while residents in neighbouring flats are
supposed to stay put until the fire service attends.
Coroner’s Report
An inquest into the event found London Fire Brigade personnel were negligent
by failing to react quickly to the situation and also informing residence to stay
where put. The fire service did not attend to the caller within the 30 minutes stay
put time limit.
The jurors also concluded that It would have been possible for residence to
escape without assistance, however, there was much confusion over the layout
of the building and flat numbers which prevented firefighters getting to dwellings
quickly. The government policy of “stay put” clearly did not work.
It is therefore, important that there is a full understanding of how and why the
fire developed and spread quickly to improve building design and technology
installed within for passive and active fire protection measures.
The fire development and spread was unusual in this case and the
circumstances resulting in this event are still unknown. However various
sources on the internet indicate that breaches in compartmentation could have
caused the fire. Southwark Council did a post fire recommendation and a

9. review of their policies concerning fire risk assessments of high-rise buildings,
training for staff and liaising with emergency services.
Case Study 2, Grenfell Tower Fire
According to the New York Times, Residents of Grenfell Tower had complained
for years that the 24-story public housing block invited catastrophe. It lacked fire
alarms, sprinklers and a fire escape. It had only a single staircase. And there
were concerns about the cladding that was supposed to improve the building
aesthetics and energy consumption.
The fire started in a Hotpoint fridge freezer on the fourth floor. The fire engulfed
one side of the building externally, before consuming the entire block. According
to the BBC, flammable cladding installed on Grenfell Tower in a recent
renovation is thought to have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire.
Both the cladding and insulation on the outside of the building failed all
preliminary tests by the police. The insulation samples burned more quickly
than the cladding tiles.
The concrete-framed Grenfell Tower was designed in 1967 and completed in
1974. It was refurbished in 2016 by lead contractor Rydon Maintenance in an
£8.6 million scheme for the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management
Organisation, which maintains the local council’s housing stock.
The refurbishment was designed by architect Studio E and the renovations
were regularly inspected by the London council building control team. According
to drawings, the retrofit replaced the original façade of precast spandrel panels
and single-glazed aluminium windows with new powder-coated aluminium
windows and a cladding system. It was calculated that the cladding would save
households around £200 a year on their energy bills, and to further increase the

10. energy efficiency of the building a new heating and hot-water system was
installed.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The Grenfell Tower fire has been a wake-up call for British the government
and society at large. Urgent changes are needed to ensure that the lessons
learnt are speedily acted upon to avoid such tragic incidents happening
again.
Questions such as why local authorities and the government did not
implement suggestions made after the Lakanal House fire in 2009 still need to
be answered at the highest government levels.
According to Hackitt (2018), “Ignorance, indifference and inadequate regulation
led to the Grenfell Tower disaster, not its cladding alone”.
A recent report by an Independent Reference Group recommends that any
learning outcomes from the interim and final reports of the Grenfell Public
Inquiry and the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety are
considered and implemented by the government speedily.
The lack of a total ban on non-fire rated cladding in high rise buildings
reinforces the argument that the government is protecting elite members of
society who own and run the cladding manufacturing industries at the expense
of the lower members of society.
The government should consider introducing mandatory clerk of works
inspections during refurbishment and maintenance to ensure that
compartmentation is maintained at all times.

11. Attitudes towards fire safety measures need to change so that the preservation
and protection of human lives is always put first and not profits first.
For many years, members of regulatory bodies had written letters requesting
new restrictions on cladding, especially as the same flammable facades blamed
for fires in France, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and elsewhere were in
use at Grenfell. However, the United Kingdom government has to date resisted
implementing this.
Also, the recent findings of the Independent Reference Group recommend that
future learning outcomes or recommendations from the Grenfell tragedy are
considered and implemented where necessary by the Housing Executive as
soon as practically possible, however the same group fails to recommend the
outright ban of flammable cladding.
In finality to prevent such tragic fire incidents happening, CDM (2015),
regulations need to be re-invented to ensure that all stakeholders in a
construction put safety first.
This research looked at the government’s willingness to review and implement
wholesome changes with regards to recommendations made by industry
experts. It is clear from the literature above that recommendations and
standards were not effected. The stay put policy should be reviewed and
amended for high rise residential buildings. Once there is a real fire in tower
blocks residents should always be advised to evacuate.
(Word count 2520)
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