News

Good article and advice from Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service regarding garden fires (otherwise known as bonfires!)

For me this is about showing your fellow neighbours some courtesy during a difficult time for us all.  Appreciating that having a bonfire can cause your neighbours disturbance and increase tensions at an already heightened time is the main message.

Again, let’s apply some common sense here.  There is a difference between burning off a few garden items at the back of a garden that is not overlooked compared to illegally burning of plastic and refuse items in a busy street when those items should go to the dump.

Stay safe and think of others

Good article about London Fire Brigade (LFB) providing advice to owners of historic buildings during the Coronavirus outbreak.  All major events provide different and unique risks and now we have many buildings around the country (not just historic) mainly empty.  This in many ways reduces the fire risk from an occupancy and human error perspective but can increase the risk of accidental fires not being noticed quickly or fire alarms not being heard if not linked to a control centre.

Stay vigilant

This article describes how some leaseholders face over a 1200% rise in their insurance costs due to the cladding on their building. The installation of cladding they had absolutely nothing to do with and are now facing huge amounts of stress and uncertainty.  Their worries include remaining in their homes, money, mortgages not to mention the life safety concerns the cladding can potentially cause.

Interesting how Governments, banks and insurance companies do everything they can to make things as tough as possible by artificially inflating the price of assets and premiums year after year and then whenever the going gets tough, think only of themselves and make life as tough as possible for the majority. 

These organisations take the biggest risks when things are going well and every thing is booming (although at our expense) and can decide to become completely risk intolerant on the flick of a switch.  Like the bookies, the house rarely loses.  People are being taken for fools.

What we really need from the new Fire Safety bill is to eradicate inconsistency in the field of fire safety.  Sometimes the different interpretations of differing pieces of legislation results in confusion.

Let’s hope we get clarity and even some simplicity in the bill which can be applied and interpretated consistently.  It’s also important the changes are achievable and can be understood by the responsible person.  As simple as that sounds, it’s no good making legislative changes that are illogical or impractical to complete especially when you consider all the various issues cladding and external walls are currently causing.

There are always two sides to every story.   This is an interesting article because the owner of one of the UK’s largest Cladding suppliers makes some good points. 

It’s easy to just say you must continue to remove all of the cladding during this Covid 19 period but that will obviously cause logistical issues.  Government ministers and Metropolitan Mayors insisting this work continues during the virus and venting their anger and disappointment that work has slowed.  Does the health and welfare of these cladding workers not matter as much- should we allow them to take all the risks?

Of course it’s crucial work and vitally important for residents of these buildings.  But spare a thought for the Cladding removers too.