UPDATED WITH BRENT COUNCIL STATEMENT: LETTER: Will Brent Housing ever carry out the urgent repair to the self-closing fire door on the 3rd Floor at William Dunbar House, South Kilburn?

 

The fire door that is supposed to be self-closing remains open - allowing flames and smoke to penetrate the building.

 

Brent Council reacts on Twitter to John's first letter - January 18th, 2022

UPDATE February 2nd 2022

 

 

Dear Editor,

 

Will Brent Housing ever carry out the urgent repair to the self-closing fire door on the 3rd Floor at William Dunbar House, South Kilburn?

 

As readers of WM know, I have been trying to get the council to fix the Fire door on the 3rd floor for a long time, which compromises my safety and that of everyone living in the block.

 

Last night there was a serious fire in Poplar on the 8th floor of a tower block which required an emergency evacuation, with some residents escaping via an internal fire escape.

 

If a fire was to break out on the 3rd floor of my block and smoke and flames escaped from the flat where the fire was, it would quickly travel out the open fire door into our only internal fire escape, leaving  everyone living in the block trapped with possible fatal consequences.

 

Nobody can ever predict when a fire might break out in their home, so I am calling on Brent Council for one last time to repair the fire door to ensure the safety of everyone living there.

 

Finally, the council are breaking the law, as The Fire Safety Order (2005) updated in 2021 says "landlords have a duty of care to protect any residents living in William Dunbar House" but for some reasons known only to themselves, they have chosen to break the law by not repairing the fire door.

 

Thank you

John Healy.

 

Here is a reminder of Brent Council's undertaking following the Grenfell disaster

 

 And here is the link to the manufacturer's statement on maintenance:

https://www.gerdasecurity.co.uk/productsandservices/communal-fire-doorsets/maintenance.aspx

 

 

"How 'Urgent' is 'Urgent' when there's a major fire risk fault?" No repair of fire door at William Dunbar House yet

 

 Picture taken yesterday

It will be 2 weeks on Monday from when Pensioner John Healy wrote a letter to Wembley Matters desperately seeking help in getting Brent Council to deal with faulty fire doors at his South Kilburn block, William Dunbar House. LINK

Shortly after publication I was able to update the article with news that a councillor was taking up the case.

In a further article on January 18th we revealed that another door, on the 5th floor was also faulty and this time Brent Council replied on Twitter:

 Escalation as a matter of 'Urgency' was welcome but another week has gone by and the 3rd floor door has still not been fixed. (Photo above).  John Healy discovered that some flats in the same block did not have self-closing doors.

John said:

Could you question the Council as to what they mean by 'urgent'.  The council told me they carried out an inspection on the doors after your first story in WM without the pictures, which is 2 weeks ago.  Tthought the Council said 'this issue is urgent" but I have to spend another weekend at least, worrying about a possible Fire in my block.

Could you also ask them about all these flats that do not have self closing fire doors?  I assume they belong to leaseholders.

UPDATED WITH COUNCIL RESPONSE: Brent Council must exercise its duty of care and fix the non-operating self-closing fire doors at South Kilburn block. Have they not learnt lessons from Grenfell?

 This 3rd floor self-closing fire door has not been working since 2017 despite notification to Brent Council

A week ago Wembley Matters published a letter from John Healy who lives at William Dunbar House on the South Kilburn Estate. LINK

He had resorted to writing the letter to ask Wembley Matters for helf after his attempts to get Brent Council to repair what are supposed to be self-closing fire doors that have remained open. One since 2017!

John Healy wrote:

At the Grenfell Inquiry, self closing fire doors that did not self close were identified as the second highest issue after unsafe cladding and as a result I have been emailing the council to fix 2 self closing doors that do not self close and which are part of my only fire escape in my high-rise, one on the 3rd floor & one on the 5th floor but after 3 years, they still have not been fixed and everyone's safety is under threat because of this.

I had a response to one of my emails from a housing officer who said "Fire Safety is not included in my job description" and he failed to pass it on to another officer, who did have Fire Safety in their job description.

After 3 years I decided to ask the London Fire Brigade to solve the issue but I was shocked by their reply, which said they were not responsible for Fire Safety in council blocks and they forwarded my email back to Brent Council who failed to take any action as usual.

I hope that now the evidence of failure to rectify is public that Brent Council will exercise its dury of care to residents and quickly fix the problem on the 3rd floor and the more recent 5th floor problem (below) and check every self-closing door in the block.

 As I  was was completing this article I received another email from John Healy that speaks for itself:

Can you ask Brent Housing to carry out a full inspection of all the fire doors in William Dunbar House, as I have only checked those doors up to the 5th floor and for all I know, there may be many others in the floors above me.

At the Grenfell Inquiry Mr. Stokes the Fire Risk assessor carried out his FRA's without actually going into the tower.  Since I began emailing the council, my block has had 2 FRA's, with the last one in 2019 and neither of them noticed the damaged doors.

II can only assume that the FRA's in my block were carried out using the same method as Mr. Stokes, where the assessor never actually visited my block.  The last one even got the location of our only fire escape wrong. He said it was next to the lift shaft and anyone entering the building could clearly see the stairwell began at the far side of the building.

When I reported this to Brent Housing they said "they had full confidence in the FRA assessor and it did not matter that he got the location wrong".

It is worth recalling that a resident of Grenfell had written a series of blog articles drawing attention to the fire danger in the block. He was ignored.

 RESPONSE ON TWITTER SHORTLY AFTER THE ABOVE ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED