the snap general election thread

Fella

Joe_Horner wrote: »

That would be a broader strategy such as Labour tried to initiate last year with an amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill to require let properties to be fit for habitation?

Or perhaps the similar initiative that a labour MP tried to start in 2015 with the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation Bill) which was filibustered by a Tory landlord?

Communities minister Marcus Jones said the Government believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it.

“Of course we believe that all homes should be of a decent standard and all tenants should have a safe place to live regardless of tenure, but local authorities already have strong and effective powers to deal with poor quality and safe accommodation and we expect them to use them,” he said in a reply.

Nice simple question for you. Since you obviously disagree with the above, which specific powers do you believe local authorities currently lack when it comes to dealing with poor quality and safe accommodation?

I'm assuming you've done your homework & know what you're talking about, and will therefore be able to answer.

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

But why stop there, if we are willing to spend £370 million in perpetuity to fit sprinklers to flats (which look 1/3rd as likely to suffer fire damage that spreads according to USA data) then why not fit sprinklers to all house since they are at more risk? That is then a £7.8 billion annual cost in perpetuity to reduce a small number of fire deaths and injuries

This is the last time I'm going to mention this, before I assume that you're just trolling.

The reason no-one is talking about fitting sprinklers to every house in the UK is because they don't need to. Sprinklers don't make sense in almost any low-rise building, because, in case you've missed it, people in 1/2/3 story dwellings aren't normally trapped inside a building until the fire stops. They can go out a door/windows, and can be brought out from the outside rather than a stairwell.

Why, given that it makes no sense to do so, would anyone consider sprinklers in all houses, and given that, why are you still trying to use it as some sort of argument?

CKhalvashi

antrobus wrote: »

We do we need legislation to ensure that council housing is fit for human habitation?

Why should council housing not be fit for human habitation?

Is there something that isn't human in those that live in council houses?

Before you answer that, remember I spent a fair part of my childhood living on a council estate in the North, and others here I'm sure live in social housing. You may need us to back you on something we do agree on in future.

Herzlos wrote: »

The reason no-one is talking about fitting sprinklers to every house in the UK is because they don't need to. Sprinklers don't make sense in almost any low-rise building, because, in case you've missed it, people in 1/2/3 story dwellings aren't normally trapped inside a building until the fire stops. They can go out a door/windows, and can be brought out from the outside rather than a stairwell.

And I'm sure that even if the stairwell is locked, there will be a van parked somewhere locally with a ladder on the roof that can be 'borrowed' to let people out before emergency services come.

I'm sure the owner of it wouldn't mind in the circumstances.

Now imagine the same situation in a high rise, especially taking into account that as we now know (and in fairness, as I hadn't thought about before the fire) at lease some contain flammable cladding.

GreatApe

:A

Herzlos wrote: »

You keep banging on about the cost of fitting a sprinkler system to every house, and people have pointed out at least 3 times that it's not relevant - you do not need a sprinkler in your average 2/3 story house.

You need a sprinkler system in a 4+ story dwelling*, which cuts your number of installations down drastically.

Do you fancy trying to run the relevant numbers?


*i.e. the ones where you have no option but to go down a huge central stairwell. You don't need a sprinker if you can climb out of the window or can be reached with a ladder.

Like I have said on this thread before, it looks like houses are more likely to catch fire and fire is more likely to spread beyond the room it started and beyond the floor it started inside of houses. So it seems flats are possibly less dangerous and suspectable to fire.

Also fire disproportionately kills those age 65+ and especially those age 70+
I don't see many of them able to jump a second floor window and often this will be after having been weakened physically and mentally from all the smoke and heat they have inhaled. Fire also disproportionately kills single person households

Of course if I had the fire accidents and deaths by type of residence I would do the sums for each type of residence but I couldn't find that data. Right now neither of us know which types of property are at more risk and by how much more risk. So you can't claim its massively different for flats. I've also pointed out the USA data which shows houses are 3x more likely for the fire to spread beyond the room it started and 3x as more likely to spread to additional floors from the floor it started.

antrobus

CKhalvashi wrote: »

Why should council housing not be fit for human habitation?..

Council housing should be fit for human habitation, irrespective of what the law says. Do councils need to be told that?

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

Why not do both? The cost of fitting sprinklers where actually needed isn't that high and could potentially save a lot of life and property.

We're not talking about fitting personal escape pods for each apartment, which would be disproportionate, but spending what, £1.5k per flat on sprinklers?

Would we need a sprinkler system if the passive systems weren't bypassed in order to save money?

Sprinklers are expensive for the risk they reduce primarily because the risk is so low to start with

It takes about 250,000 years for one property to catch fire that results in one death.

So to protect one death is not the cost of 1 sprinkler its the cost to install 1 sprinkler every 50 years for 250,000 years. So the cost is you need to install 5,000 sprinklers to save 1 life. At £6k for a single sprinkler system it costs £30 million to save one life. The time value of money and maintiance etc meana the actual cost is closer to £40 million to save one life

We could literally save 40 x as many life years spending the same amount on the NHS or save 10,000 x as many life years with foreign aid.

So while you think I'm the nasty !!!!!!! or greedy or unwilling to pay for safety, the fact is if we followed your ideas of ignoring cost vs reduced risk we would be doing less overall good and saving fewer people


Some people have tries to counter this by sating we should for sprinklers only on the more at risk properties. Yes that is fine but are any properties at mangitides more risk? If a prpeprtt is 50x more at risk of fire than the average it is just about worthwhile. While flats may be more at risk are they 50 x more at risk? (And right now we don't know which types of prpeprtt are at more risk. I am confident however that its unlikely that there is such a huge difference of risk between flats and houses especially as it seems flats are more resistant to fire propagation)

ThinkingOutLoud_2

I think the point about councils is unlike rogue landlords who need to be influenced into better behaviour - surely they have a fundamental and clear duty to do this without yet more legislation?

Of course there may be some council failing to deliver - that is about holding them to account anyway surely?

CKhalvashi

ThinkingOutLoud wrote: »

I think the point about councils is unlike rogue landlords who need to be influenced into better behaviour - surely they have a fundamental and clear duty to do this without yet more legislation?

Of course there may be some council failing to deliver - that is about holding them to account anyway surely?

This response is for Antrobus's benefit largely:

How do you expect to ensure that councils do that unless you have legislation in place to ensure councils aren't failing?

I am the first to say that those responsible should be personally prosecuted in situations where the council are to blame, as well as holding the council as a unit fully to account.

These homes are usually let to the most vulnerable with an average tenancy of much longer than 6 or 12 months commonly found in the private sector. The properties are also inspected a lot less, and I have seen first hand the failings of social landlords in getting the basics right.

I'm sorry you don't feel that those living in social housing are important enough to warrant legislation in the same way as private tenants have.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

This is the last time I'm going to mention this, before I assume that you're just trolling.

The reason no-one is talking about fitting sprinklers to every house in the UK is because they don't need to. Sprinklers don't make sense in almost any low-rise building, because, in case you've missed it, people in 1/2/3 story dwellings aren't normally trapped inside a building until the fire stops. They can go out a door/windows, and can be brought out from the outside rather than a stairwell.

Why, given that it makes no sense to do so, would anyone consider sprinklers in all houses, and given that, why are you still trying to use it as some sort of argument?

Well this is the best I can do for you


Let's assume all fire deaths are in flats
And that sprinklers could save 80% of them so 240 lives a year
Let's assume 20% of the UK housing stock are flats

That means 5.6 million flats at a cost of £6k per property works out to £33.6 billion
These things need replacing every 50 years and using a discount rate of 4% it works out to £1.56 billion per year in perpetuity. That cost does not include maintiance or other additional costs

1.56 billion divided by 240 lives saved = £6.5 million per life
And remember we assumed we fit sprinklers to just flats and that would save all fire deaths so its a big underestimate

Still well above what we value life for in the NHS.


So as I keel saying fire is such a negligible risk in this day and age that even if it was 10 x as common sprinkler systems would make no sense

steampowered

ThinkingOutLoud wrote: »

I think the point about councils is unlike rogue landlords who need to be influenced into better behaviour - surely they have a fundamental and clear duty to do this without yet more legislation?

Of course there may be some council failing to deliver - that is about holding them to account anyway surely?

And also about holding government to account - as the government is responsible for determining council budgets. If you cut council budgets by 40% in real terms, you can't expect the same level of service provision.

One possible conclusion from the report might be that maintenance of social housing is woefully inadequate, in which case councils will need funds to be able to address that.

It also seems that the council in this case had outsourced care of the flats into the private sector (along with many of their other public services). Outsourcing of all kinds of public services by councils to the very cheapest lowest quality bidder they can find has been a very common response by councils across the country to funding costs. There are questions to be asked around whether this kind of arrangement is working.