London tower blaze: building’s owners “ignored fire warnings for six years”

Developers who added two floors to a tower block that caught fire in east London at the weekend ignored complaints first made six years ago that its cladding was non-compliant, one of the building’s ex-managers says. In addition, compartmentation between the floors that was supposed to be fireproof wasn’t, and the developers initially claimed the building was a “stay put” structure like the ill-fated Grenfell tower in west London, meaning standard procedure in the event of a fire would have been to tell residents to stay in their flats. The former manager, who spoke anonymously to Tortoise, said he reported the fire safety issues to the London Fire Brigade in 2018, “and mercifully the fire brigade were on top of this one”. The cladding burned fast as in the Grenfell disaster, but this time all the building’s residents were accounted for safely in a rescue operation involving more than 200 firefighters.