Fire at Grenfell Tower in London

some interesting details in there

The complex, a former HMRC office block, is owned by developer St Edward, a joint venture between the Berkeley Group and Prudential

Two bedroom flats are currently being advertised for up to £2.4 million, meaning the overall cost could be as much as £150 million.

A source at the development said many of the flats had been bought by foreign buyers, often knocking through walls to make bigger homes. The source said: “It is crazy money. The garage is full of Maseratis and Ferraris. But I think maybe the people here wouldn’t mind the empty flats being used - it would be a way of giving something back.

“There are a lot of empty flats here - it would be the right thing to do.”

the government sells property and it's snapped up by developers who sell flats for millions to people who don't have any intention of living there, great stuff

nationalise the construction and development industries tbh

lolico, call hi by his name

the comments on that article are, of course, largely horrific

feels bizarre and perverse and indicative of the state of things that the city fucks up housing people in places that meet a basic standard to the point that tens of people die as a result, then makes amends by giving those people a multi-million pound home with a swimming pool, around the corner.

i'd be really interested to know how much the building sold for when hmrc gave it up by my google powers are failing me

It's like those stories where billionaires are asked by their maids to sort out toilet roll supply and buy them a factory or something. Or the local poshos who donated sets of golf clubs. Can just see the City of London saying "need to get these fellows some flats, but nothing too dear of course, why, hello there".

Hopefully will depress the prices on the other intended empty units and start the great buy-to-invest exodus.

xp
From a bit of googling, it looks like lots of the HMRC estate (including Charles House, this building) was taken over by Mapeley under a PFI deal in 2001…
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/hm-revenue-customs-estate-private-finance-deal-eight-years-on/
I can't see what happened after that. Did Mapeley sell it on?

the standard story says it's currently owned by a developer st edward, so i guess so

i'd be really interested to know how much the building sold for when hmrc gave it up by my google powers are failing me

I'm struggling too but I'm trying the Council's Capital programme documents. Most interesting thing I've found in them so far is in the 2013-14 statement:

https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/capital_programme_2013-14.pdf

Grenfell Tower Refurbishment – the tower is a 23 storey
1970s tower block that is in need of refurbishment and updating.
The project includes window replacement, thermal cladding to
improve insulation, a new communal heating system and
conversion of unused office space into additional dwellings.

So confirmation from contemporaneous documents that the cladding work was primarily for insulation purposes and not the cosmetic story doing the rounds.

The aesthetic concerns were part of the spec, as is normal whenever estates (including mine) are regenerated (our regeneration has been put on indefinite hold, huzzah - Camden tenants voted against handing over to an ALMO).

tbf i don't think they were ever likely to outright say the work was to tidy up an eyesore in an official document - insulation seems like a plausible reason and if it just happens to also make the building less offensive to affluent eyes, well then i guess it's just a bonus eh what-what *pops champagne cork, ingites £100 note in front of a homeless person*

Right, I think I have it...

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo021107/text/21107w85.htm

Mapeley paid £370M for the IR/HMCE properties

http://www.mapeley.com/CaseStudies/CharlesHouse.aspx

Mapely got rid of it for Nil Premium to clear their liabilities when HMRC cut back on their office needs

interesting - cheers aldo

so it sold for £370m and is now allegedly worth £2bn, while the cost of rehousing local people there could be £150m

hurrah for capitalism

St Edward apparently sold the apartments at "cost price" - so £10m rather than £150m.

However, it's not clear if these were the existing "affordable housing" units built into the development.

Affordable housing was removed as a requirement:

http://www.kensingtonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/Annual-2014-2015.pdf

Page 49 or thereabouts

Basically, in the choice between affordable housing or the school the planners chose the school. Also issues with providing new/separate access.

I wasn't suggesting earlier that cosmetics wasn't a consideration at Grenfell Tower, but it absolutely wouldn't be unusual on a Capital Programme report to say that work was cosmetic/to improve the appearance.

£370M wasn't for Charles House, it was for ALL the buildings in that Hansard answer.

According to this guy's LinkedIn profile, just the cost of demolishing the building as was before new build/regen could start was £2.5M

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-read-49a01248/?ppe=1

I wasn't suggesting earlier that cosmetics wasn't a consideration at Grenfell Tower, but it absolutely wouldn't be unusual on a Capital Programme report to say that work was cosmetic/to improve the appearance.

The external finishes would have needed planning approval from the council. So there was scope there for council officials to have some input into the aesthetics

Also the skyscraper forum that stet I think linked to upthread is really interesting. An early planning statement doesn't mention aluminium panels but zinc ones.

Absolutely, don't disagree with those points. I'm just pointing out that the council were formally describing it as cladding for insulation purposes in 2013/14 so as far as they were concerned at that time it was the primary purpose of the works.

Yes I know. I wasn't having a pop.

K&C chief exec sacked http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40362317

Paget-Brown needs to go.

http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/treasury-economics-george-osborne-and-grenfell-tower

I find myself agreeing with much of this Ann Pettifor piece, but not entirely sure about her her line of argument and conclusion - probably need to read it again later.

Poignant messages left by firemen at the scene of the #GrenfellTower fire. pic.twitter.com/U3yWbQYU5Y

— CameramanJim (@cameramanjimITV) June 22, 2017

http://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/treasury-economics-george-osborne-and-grenfell-tower🕸

I find myself agreeing with much of this Ann Pettifor piece, but not entirely sure about her her line of argument and conclusion - probably need to read it again later.

I completely agree. The economic profession largely embraced austerity and not for any reasons that could be supported by evidence or observation. Dogma is the right word for it and their myopic stupidity is one of the root causes of all this.

yeah that article is booming

Thread on Grenfell and the death toll (79 is far, far too low) which is fuelling suspicion of a cover up (1/?)

— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) June 25, 2017

When all the scummer press were focusing on the faulty Hotpoint fridge/freezer the other day I couldn't help thinking it wouldn't have caught fire if it was plugged into an RCBO (which will trip on slightest phase neutral imbalance or overcurrent) circuit. And also all electrical appliances can become dangerous over time. I appreciate Hotpoint don't have a good record, but in social housing people who are poor are more likely to buy 2nd hand white goods.

Yeah, short of signs of arson or particularly foolhardy risks, focusing on the cause of this or any domestic fire is limited in use at best.

In this instance it's actively distracting

This is damning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056nw0f

A fire expert inspecting another Rydon building.

I do like the way that man says the word "appalling"

Jesus, that clip. My dad worked on buildings like that in the 70s and has been banging on for days about how they must have opened up additional fire routes beyond just the cladding for it to have got to the core in the way it looks like it did in Grenfell. Which is exactly what that inspector is saying.

I actually thought that gas couldn't be Installed in Tower blocks in the uk.

well that's not a very can-do attitude!

In 2008 restrictions on types of gas cookers in all flats came into effect - but applied only to new purchases.

Focus on the cladding panels alone is missing the point. From https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/27/may-orders-national-inquiry-after-100-failure-rate-in-high-rise-cladding-tests?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"The government has given limited information about how the tests on cladding samples are being carried out by the Building Research Establishment. The Department for Communities and Local Government said it was undertaking combustibility tests on core materials, but experts have warned that cladding systems also need to be tested as a whole, including insulation materials and design features such as fire breaks.

“You are testing a material in isolation,” said David Metcalfe, the head of the Centre for Window and Cladding Technology. “What we need to consider is how it performs as a system – it’s the cladding, it’s the support system, it’s the insulation, it’s the cavity barriers, it’s all of these things combined to determine what happens in a fire.”

Also worrying in that article is the report of blocks missing loads of fire doors. That's a complete absence of responsibility for fire safety by whichever landlord it is.

Javid was going in on the number of blocks in Camden missing fire doors, leading rw twitter to rage at high rise dwellers stealing and selling doors for scrap and alleging that camden is corbyn's favourite council (doesn't really work but is attempt to turn story into stick to beat labour).

Javid btw was on the list of landlord MPs who voted against tougher safety measures on landlords. Of course.

Police have said they don't expect to have a firm death toll *this year*.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/40434741

The actual fuck

What will change next year

Tory/DUP government on more strong and stable footing.

Why the fuck is it so hard?

Why the fuck is it so hard?

Because there could be lots of people who weren't officially living there and there is nothing left of them.

Probably true but I've noticed this before in the UK, these things move at a snail's pace, it took them 6 months to recover four bodies from that power station that collapsed last year.

Yeah but... Aren't they missed by someone? I'd reckon the completely unaccounted for are far outnumbered by those who people know of are missed because of this. xp

I guess people know who some of the missing people are but given the unofficial nature of their occupancy they're reluctant to come forward, even though the Met have stated there's an amnesty on those who were sub-letting.

There's a lot of leeway between firm death toll and expected approximate final figure, which they are avoiding for all they're worth since last week