More than 1,000 fire safety jobs in Hackney could still be outstanding on Grenfell anniversary
Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. Photograph: Natalie Oxford via Twitter
At least 40 per cent of urgent fire safety jobs in council buildings will breach the one-month window recommended by experts – while 1,000 jobs could still be outstanding on the anniversary of the Grenfell fire.
Hackney Council has carried out 60 per cent of the nearly 3,000 high priority works, which were discovered in fire risk assessments (FRAs) ordered after the fatal Kensington blaze last year.
This is up from 17 per cent completed as of February.
But a council spokesperson has told the Citizen that the remaining 1,184 high priority works – which cover such issues as “combustible items being left near an escape route” – “will be completed in the next three months”.
Since all the FRAs were published online by December 2017, the outstanding 40 per cent of the urgent works, and possibly more, would not have been done within one month of the assessment, as urged by experts.
There are also a further 12,571 “medium priority” recommendations in the FRAs, of which 60 per cent or 7,428 are still outstanding.
The council said a further 11 “critical” issues – the most urgent – have all been completed.
A Hackney Council spokesperson said: “A recommendation may be classed as ‘high priority’ for many reasons and it does not necessarily mean the issue presents an immediate and significant danger to residents. Also, some recommendations take longer than others to address due to their complexity.
“Following the council’s extensive fire safety checks, almost 22,000 recommendations were recorded.
“The huge scale of the works required, and the council’s limited resources and staff, has meant that we are addressing the recommendations using a risk based approach.
“This means that although not all of the high priority recommendations are being seen to within the one month timescale, the most urgent issues are being addressed first and as quickly as we can.”