Fire Safety & Cladding

It’s All a Facade



We recently reported on a close escape by a tenant of One Housing Group (OHG) when a lump of metal fell from a neighbour’s window onto the communal garden.

The slab of lead that narrowly missed Ms Smith

The lump of lead that Ms Smith said “could have easily killed me or any of the residents in London Plane House. The landlord’s garden maintenance team had been working there too, and were also at risk. The state of the building must have been known to OHG and should have been repaired before it became so dangerous.”

Full story Falling Metal Close Escape for One Housing Tenant

Initially, OHG ignored Ms Smith’s appeals to the landlord to repair the window and carry out a full inspection of London Plane House and properties of similar construction. Within 24 hours of the blog post by SHAC@OHG, the landlord finally dragged themselves into action and erected scaffolding around the property.

The landlord has commissioned scaffolding …

… but not yet managed to do any work

Unfortunately, that’s where their efforts stopped, and they fell back asleep. Could it be that they believe this will be sufficient to let the matter drop from the public eye? There has been no effort to assess whether other windows on the estate are similarly dangerous, with metal set to crash down, possibly causing injury or death. Tenants are left to wonder if this is what it would take to get progress.

SHAC@OHG says: It’s time for Chief Executive Richard Hill and recently appointed Chair of the Board Caroline Corby to get their house in order, check whether the reports being made by their senior staff are accurate before they believe them, and make tenant safety their number one priority.

21 November 2020

2 thoughts on “It’s All a Facade”

Leave a Reply