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I imagine this will be the first of many examples of who will pay for the removal of cladding from the exterior walls of high rise blocks of flats. Will it be the Government, Housing Associations or leaseholders themselves..... Think about those buildings that have already had two years plus of paying for ‘Walking Watches’ which already amounts to huge amounts of money and then comes the cost of the actual removal. Watch this space because there must be so many of these buildings and nobody wants to pay......

1 in 10 schools still without an electrical test certificate and 13% without a fire risk assessment. That is a lot of school buildings across the UK that are failing to comply with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005.

You have to ask how a £23 million new build student accommodation building can have an enforcement notice issued after only a few months. But then again is it really that surprising. As I have said before it’s not always about the amount of money or about the Building Regulations but a whole range of issues. It’s how the work is carried out, the contractors, the persons responsible for checking the work along the way, Building Control, Fire Safety Inspectors, architects, I could go on and on. The point is that you can have the best Fire Safety regulations in the world, spend all the money in the world but still things that can cost next to nothing can have a bigger impact. Collaborative working, communication, leadership and organisation to name a few. I personally believe we are building buildings cheaper with poorer materials and paying more for them. It’s the tip of the iceberg and once again a fire safety issue related in some sense to building works and construction.

Good article and lots of good ideas to enhance fire safety protection. What is important though is that whatever laws are passed that they are correctly interpreted and implemented. You could argue all the right laws were in place before Grenfell but it’s how they are followed and the competence of a whole range of individuals and organisations. Ensuring these groups work together is more important than introducing new laws and regulations.

Potentially some good news for the so called ‘mortgage prisoners’ who have been unable to sell their flats due to banks being unwilling to lend on their properties due to the cladding. We recently provided a report to assist a tenant and would happily assist others where we can too allow the high rise properly market to function again providing it is safe to do so.

When it comes to fitting sprinklers or any type of fire prevention system within an existing block of flats this will be a typical reaction. The whole issue of retrospectively installing fire safety systems in buildings that were built under regulations that didn’t require it at the time will always cause financial disputes like this. It’s all very well to suggest and try to implement laws to do this but you do have to have a common sense approach and understand the financial and logistical implications too. In an ideal world every block of flats would have sprinklers but we don’t live in an ideal world and like everything else, someone has to pay.