Wandsworth Council’s post-Grenfell sprinkler dispute – the story so far

Wandsworth Council’s post-Grenfell sprinkler dispute – the story so far

The horror of the Grenfell Tower fire prompted a range of rapid judgements, some of which no longer appear sound. Might these include Wandsworth Council’s decision to install water sprinklers in every housing block it owns of ten or more storeys in height?

That is certainly the view of at least some residents of the 99 buildings in the borough lined up for this form of fire safety retrofitting. Do they have a point? Will Wandsworth succeed in putting its plans into effect? If it does, who will meet the cost of implementing them? What are the wider rights and wrongs of a swift council action that has led to a long-running dispute?

Wandsworth took its decision to retrofit sprinklers within ten days of the awful tragedy in North Kensington, which claimed 72 lives. Council leader Ravi Govindia told the Evening Standard at the time that although he did not think there was a “specific risk to any of our high rise properties, we are simply not prepared to take a chance”. He pledged that sprinklers would be fitted to every one of the roughly 6,400 homes concerned “as quickly as possible”. A council officer’s report said installing sprinklers would “give a measure of reassurance” to those living in the blocks.

Local fire chief Darren Munro, also quoted in the Standard, welcomed the council’s move. However, it soon became apparent that not every resident Wandsworth wished to reassure was enthused by the announcement. The council approved the move in September and set aside £30 million to pay for the work. Then, in November, it said: “While council tenants will not need to pay a penny towards the overall bill, leaseholders who have bought their homes would be required to pay a modest share of the cost”. About 2,350 of the 6,400 homes are owned by leaseholders, the majority of whom live in them. They all found themselves looking at possible bills of £3,000-£4,000, to be paid through an increase in their service charges. This didn’t seem “modest” to some of them.

Govindia wrote to Chancellor Philip Hammond, asking for “specific financial aid for Wandsworth leaseholders,” to help them pay their share of the cost of installing sprinklers in their homes. As yet, this has not been forthcoming. And soon, other objections were being raised by residents. It was argued that fire brigade inspections had found no cause for concern and that Grenfell did not alter that fact, not least because (with two exceptions) none of the 99 Wandsworth blocks were encased in combustible cladding and that, in any case, there was no clear agreement that the presence of internal sprinklers would have made any significant difference to the progress of the Grenfell blaze. Also, the council’s right to raise leaseholder service charges for this particular purpose was questioned.

Seeking a resolution of the latter issue, in January 2018, Wandsworth decided to refer its decision upwards to the relevant national government body, its First Tier Property Tribunal (FTPT), for an adjudication. This was not about whether installing sprinklers was a good idea, but whether Wandsworth is entitled to charge leaseholders for doing so. However, debate about sprinklers in the Grenfell context continued.

In May 2018, James Brokenshire, secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, said in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s post-Grenfell fire safety review, that “Sprinklers can be an effective fire safety measure, but they are one of many such measures that could be adopted and…no single fire safety measure, including sprinklers, can be seen as a panacea.” (see page three of safety review report via here). However, the following July, as Wandsworth was quick to note, the Commons housing select committee, also addressing the Hackitt Review, concluded that the retrofitting of sprinklers should take place everywhere. Hackitt herself had told the committee there is a “clear case” for doing so with older blocks.

Meanwhile, leaseholder discontent continued. In October 2018, the Wandsworth Times reported on opposition from different parts of the borough to what one leaseholder called “a blanket policy across all the tower blocks and a knee-jerk reaction to Grenfell”. Nonetheless, in December, Wandsworth made its formal statement of case to the Property Tribunal, arguing that it has the right to install the sprinklers in the leaseholders’ flat and that leaseholders are obliged to pay, as part of their service charge, “the relevant proportion of the cost of fitting a sprinkler system in the block”. In this document, the council’s estimate of the cost to each lessee was put at “between £3,500 and £5,000”.

By then, the leaseholders were sorting out on their own position, supported by local councillors. These included the considerable figure of Malcolm Grimston, formerly a long-serving Conservative councillor who left the party in autumn 2014 and went on to hold his seat in West Hill ward in May last year, standing as an Independent and easily topping the poll. Ten of the 99 blocks are in West Hill. Grimston assisted the leaseholders with compiling their case, now submitted, arguing, among other things, that the council’s actions fall foul of the so-called “Wednesbury principles” – a reference to a 1948 test case of a public authority’s reasonableness.

The leaseholders asked the Tribunal for more time for preparation. Last month, they were given an extension until September. Among those celebrating was one of Grimston’s fellow West Hill councillors, Labour’s Angela Ireland, who is also involved with a local residents’ association. And so, nearly two years on, Wandsworth’s quick decision to install sprinklers “as quickly as possible” in response to Grenfell is still some way from being implemented.

The story has highlighted a number of important issues and, arguably, produced a few ironies too. Malcolm Grimston believes the council has brought its troubles on itself, initially by taking a very big decision without consulting any of those affected, including its own tenants, who, after all, comprise the vast majority of the residents of the 99 blocks. Attention has been focused on unhappy leaseholders, particularly the resident ones (about 1,000 are non-resident), but Grimston says many of the council’s tenants are unhappy too. Although they would not be billed for any future sprinkler works, these can be intrusive and disruptive, causing damage to decoration and furnishings (and, of course, council money spent on this would mean less money for other housing maintenance or improvements in the borough).

“The council has turned the situation into a battle,” Grimston says. “If they had taken a different, more emotionally intelligent approach, which recognised the attachments people feel towards their homes, whether they rent them or own them, a compromise might have been found and residents might even have come round to the idea.” He also wonders if the decision to turn to the Property Tribunal might have been influenced by the approach of last May’s council elections, which Labour had high hopes of winning for the first time since 1974 (they eventually fell a few seats short).

By contrast, Kim Caddy, Wandsworth’s cabinet member for housing, firmly defends the council’s actions, stressing Fire Brigade support and pointing out that retrofitting sprinklers “would bring these high rise properties up to the same safety standard as all newly-built blocks of similar height, where sprinklers have been mandatory since 2007”. She says turning to the Property Tribunal reflects council sympathy with leaseholder concerns, and will clarify the legal position regarding the works and any financial contribution they eventually have to make, “which would be spread over a number of years on an interest-free basis”.

Caddy also emphasises that other local authorities in England have embarked on installing sprinklers in 10-plus storey blocks, making the point that Wandsworth is not alone in thinking this important. In London, these authorities include Croydon, which says it was the very first in the capital to announce such a programme after Grenfell and has spent £10 million retrofitting all homes in 26 blocks. In October, Croydon announced that work on all but three had been completed (the council has been approached for an update). Also, across the river from Wandsworth, Hammersmith & Fulham, earmarked £20 million for a “fire safety plus” package in July 2017, covering tenants and leaseholders alike in blocks over six storeys in height “where sprinklers would improve safety”. It has firmly stated that “we will not be charging leaseholders for installing sprinklers”.

Like Wandsworth, these two London boroughs and others are asking national government to help them with the costs of this and other fire safety improvements post-Grenfell, so far without success. However, although it had begun removing unsafe cladding from its two affected blocks in advance of the government releasing funds to meet the cost of such works last autumn, unlike Croydon and Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth has not proceeded with installing sprinklers. Why that is so is not yet clear – elucidation has been sought – but the sheer number of such blocks in Wandsworth could well be a factor.

There are other angles on this scenario too. For example, a commenter on a Hammersmith & Fulham website page, having established from the council that the cost of sprinklers for leaseholders would be met from the council’s housing revenue account, remarked: “So, ultimately, council tenants will be paying for the sprinklers in the leaseholder flats (unless the government comes up with the money).” Did Wandsworth conclude that such a situation, with so many leaseholders involved, would have been unfair on its high rise block tenants? How might those tenants have reacted had they picked up on the same point?

The Conservative borough has long been a Right To By flagship, as Ravi Govindia pointed out in his plea to the chancellor for funds. Now it finds itself at odds with some of that policy’s beneficiaries because it isn’t yet prepared to pay for the additional fire safety measures it said straight after Grenfell should be taken with all speed. It’s become a rather sticky situation, and what happens next will be intriguing.

Categories: Analysis

5 Comments

  1. Jacob Secker says:

    Council blocks all over the UK need fire safety measures, in 1500 the issue of potentially dangerous Large Panel System constructions (Ronan Point type construction) needs to be addressed. Leaving all this to the ad hoc decision making of individual local councils is hopeless, as the experience of Haringey has shown. Only the government can centralise the expertese needed to determine which measures are actually needed given the risks and which are not needed. Expecting every single LA to employ its own experts and come up with its own plans regarding these matters is stupid and it explains the total paralysis that exists in terms of coming up with a sensible programme for ensuring the safety of blocks of flats in the UK.

  2. Malcolm Grimston says:

    A very sensible point from a former Wandsworth housing estate manager. I have always been aware that some officers were uncomfortable at Wandsworth coming out with this scheme within just two weeks of the Grenfell tragedy, without waiting for any technical findings or seeking the views of the public. Manchester City Council, for example, took well over a year to come to its position and genuinely valued the views of its residents, as a result of which it is paying for sprinklers for tenants and leaseholders alike from the Council Tax rather than ultimately piling costs on Council tenants (often not the most wealthy members of a community). It is also allowing individual residents to opt out.

    1. >”Manchester City Council, ….. is paying for sprinklers for tenants and leaseholders alike from the Council Tax rather than ultimately piling costs on Council tenants”<

      But according to Birmingham CC's barristers, the costs cannot be put on the taxpayers because it is "ring-fenced" within the Housing Revenue Account. Do Manchester have a different legal system up there?

      By the way, my Judicial Review against BCC's £31M sprinklers project is to be heard in the Court of Appeal sometime this year 2020.
      BCC have gone to no end of lengths to avoid any consideration of pros and cons, but instead they come up with excuse after excuse. Latest excuse is that the "ring-fencing" of the HRA means that the expenditure is not subject to their fiduciary duty to the Council Taxpayers (because it can only be funded from rents instead). But in that case what's going on in Manchester? http://www.towertenants.com

  3. Paddy says:

    I’m one of those residents affected by this scheme. I’m also a resident who has seen the effects of a severe fire in our Block in 2009 where a property was completely gutted (a single property, in effect, proving fires don’t spread in our 11 story block). Since then, I’ve been investigating AFSS (Automatic Fire Suppression Systems) for 10 years for my family’s safety in our home, not as a preventative measure for fire-spread. The pent-up frustration in dealing with Wandsworth Council on this topic over the last few years is boiling over to abject anger.

    Although I’m a proponent and campaigner for improving fire safety in our blocks my investigations have raised a list of legitimate concerns around retrofitting water sprinklers in high-rise buildings. Wandsworth council has already started to install these in some of its assistive living stock. These are the issues that WBC have failed to answer thus far.

    A water sprinkler, once activated, under the British standard BS 9251: 2005 for residential sprinklers, must discharge water for a MINIMUM of 30 minutes, with a minimum flow rate of 40-60 litres per minute. That’s around 12 bathtubs of water flooding your flat and those below. (even for an accidental activation). Who’s liable for the water damage caused to neighbours properties? (let alone the priceless loss of heirlooms in flats unaffected by fire).

    Residents are currently not being offered a kill switch so we can turn off the sprinklers ourselves (the council doesn’t trust us)

    Because water sprinklers contain stagnant water, Wandsworth council will have a legal duty to carry out annual Legionella disease tests in our properties. Funny how they never mention that!

    Residents homes will likely require major redesigns to accommodate the new pipework

    Pipework can freeze and burst in winter if not installed correctly.

    There will be major disruption during installation with core drilling required that could do significant damage to our building, if done badly it could potentially breach fire compartmentalisation of our blocks. Wandsworth council do not have a good track record of carrying out major works like this well.

    After saying all that, I have discovered an AFSS system that addresses many of these concerns. A misting system similar to https://plumis.co.uk/automist.html. It uses 90% less water, can be installed discreetly and modularly per flat without the need for extra water tanks, it can be activated faster to prevent build-up of toxic gases (smoke and toxic gases are normally the main killer in high-rise fires). They can be made into smart devices, calling emergencies services when activated. They are of similar cost to traditional water sprinklers. I’ve actually wanted to install one for many years. Ironically Wandsworth are now preventing me for doing so due to their strategy of taking us all to court with the FTT. Some councillors have said they haven’t decided on what type of AFSS system they will install but the legal papers they have supplied have a bias and inaccurate report stating why misting sprinklers should not be installed.
    Misting systems also have an advantage compared to over-head water sprinklers when dealing with concealed fires. It may well turn out that the initial fire at Grenfell was a concealed fire behind a fridge. Potentially meaning a water sprinkler would have not stopped the fire before it reached the flammable cladding on the outside. A misting systems could have been more performant in addressing the fire. We won’t know till after the enquiry publishes it technical review. It would be criminal for WBC to spend £30 million and force thousands of leaseholder to install a system that may have failed to prevent Grenfell.

    The reason we are in this predicament is because Wandsworth councillors think they know best and don’t see it as a priority to consult with residents. Why there’s not a residents working group on this, collaborating with the council is beyond me. They are starting to take note of my continued campaign but I don’t hold out the council will offer to work with us or ever install a system that meets resident’s needs – Would be delighted to be proven wrong.

    For anyone who’s interested in the technicals of misting there’s a very good webinar here: https://www.gotostage.com/channel/624d16a3195d4dc88ee751c594377586

    If you live in a high rise you might also like to consider a “Smoke Hood” as recommended by a leading Fire Safety Engineering Group https://fseg.gre.ac.uk/fire/fire_safety_tips.html#smoke_hoods

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