A stark warning: the Shepherd's Bush tower block fire

Despite it being 18 storeys tall, it would be easy to walk straight past Shepherd’s Court. The bland and slightly decrepit post-War tower block sits in the middle of one of London’s busiest junctions, its entrance squeezed between a Subway restaurant and a kebab shop, while the building itself rises out of the middle of a shopping mall and a Vue cinema.

“We were terrified for him. Especially in his condition.”

Dorothy Davies, resident, Shepherd’s Court

But on 19 August last year, everyone noticed it. In the middle of the afternoon, flames began pouring from the open window of a kitchen on the seventh floor, and quickly spread up the side of the building.

Dorothy Davies was leaving Westfield shopping centre on that hot summer afternoon when she saw the smoke rising from the block of flats she has called home for 30 years.

She immediately phoned her husband, an 82-year-old with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and told him to get out. He’d seen the smoke out of the window of their tenth-floor flat but he thought it was just a foggy day.

Mr Davies left the flat, but thick black fumes were already filling the stairs and he thought he would be trapped.

“We were terrified for him,” Ms Davies tells Inside Housing nearly eight months later, as she walks her dog on Shepherd’s Bush high street on a drizzly day. “Especially in his condition.”

Faced by the smoke, and panicking, he decided to use the lifts to escape. In a fire, especially one as fierce as the blaze which gripped Shepherd’s Court that day, this was a serious risk. Thankfully, he made it safely out of the building. He was just one of more than a hundred others who had to make similar escapes.

The source of the fire was pinned by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) to a faulty Indesit tumble dryer, which has been the subject of political scrutiny over product safety.

But for the housing sector there were other pressing questions about how the flames were able to shoot up the building so easily. According to the LFB, residential flats are supposed to prevent the spread of flames beyond their confines for an absolute minimum of 30 minutes. As a result, the official advice from the fire service to residents is that it is usually safer to stay put when a fire starts elsewhere in the building.

Searching for answers

Seven miles across London, Lakanal House in Southwark stands as a grim reminder of what happens when this protocol goes wrong. In 2009, a faulty TV caught fire on the ninth floor of the block. The flames spread up and down the building, trapping people in their flats. Six residents, including three children, lost their lives in harrowing, terrifying circumstances.

Local MP Andy Slaughter has told parliament that a senior fire officer who attended both blazes said he expected to find multiple serious injuries and fatalities at Shepherd’s Court because of his experience at the Lakanal House fire.

Given this background, understanding why the fire spread at Shepherd’s Court – and whether it would do so in other, similar buildings – could not be of greater importance to social landlords up and down the country.

The failings at Lakanal were myriad and well documented in the findings of a detailed coroner’s inquest into the deaths. Where the fires differ, crucially, is that the internal structure of the building at Shepherd’s Court successfully contained the flames and prevented them from spreading through the inside of the building. The fire service confirmed this shortly after the blaze.

For nine months, Inside Housing has been seeking answers from the LFB and Hammersmith & Fulham London Borough Council as to how the fire spread across the outside of the building.

Finally, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the LFB released research dated 30 November 2016 – commissioned by a consultancy called Bureau Veritas – into the white external insulation panels which are attached below the windows on Shepherd’s Court.

The panels are made of a 1mm stainless steel sheet mounted on top of 17-23mm of blue foam plastic and a plywood board, the edges enclosed by plastic foil. When first exposed to flame, nothing happened to the steel. But if exposure continued, the blue foam underneath would have begun to melt, with serious consequences.

“This would occur in a progressive fashion as the fire develops and would ultimately lead to the steel sheet not being held in place by the blue foam,” the experts said.

“The weight of the steel sheet would then ensure that it would become detached from the remainder of the panel and expose the heat-damaged blue foam and plywood layers to the developing flame front.”

The investigation concluded that this was “likely to have assisted the fire spreading up the outside of the building”.

“It can be a catastrophic problem, particularly when flames can get in through windows and a ‘stay put’ policy is in place.”

Arnold Tarling, chartered surveyor, Hindwoods

Further testing by Bureau Veritas revealed that the blue foam material in the panels was polystyrene. This should be a cause for concern. A report on fire safety by insurer RSA says: “Polystyrene is a thermoplastic material, which melts and ignites relatively easily, and can rapidly burn in between the metal facing sheets of a composite panel. This allows extensive and violent fire spread, and makes fire fighting almost impossible.”

It adds that buildings with “polystyrene panels within the external wall claddings will be very vulnerable” to fires and “the presence of polystyrene panels is regarded as being a ‘significant finding’ for the purposes of statutory fire risk assessments, due to the potential for extremely rapid fire spread and the release of large volumes of toxic smoke”.

Major concern

However, it appears Hammersmith & Fulham was not aware of this risk. In correspondence also released under the FOIA, the council responded to the LFB’s initial concerns about the panels as follows: “We are surprised to be informed of any fire risk associated with the facade panels as we had no knowledge of this prior to your letter.”

Since then, the council has taken action. The LFB has asked it “to commission a specialist to determine whether there are any issues with the panels”. The work is being carried out by CS Todd and Associates, an independent consultancy specialising in fire risk assessment. Results are expected next month.

The panels used at Shepherd’s Court were installed during window replacement work more than 10 years ago. The original contractor was Connaught, which went bust in 2010. The job was finished by Balfour Beatty, which is understood to have had no involvement in installing the panels.

Inside Housing requested further information from the council, including the panels’ fire protection rating, whether they are installed on any other buildings in the borough, and a fire risk assessment for Shepherd’s Court. However, it refused the request, with its FOIA officer saying the information is material to an ongoing “criminal” investigation being carried out by the LFB.

But when approached specifically on this point, the council’s head of communications confirmed there is no criminal investigation ongoing. Inside Housing has appealed the decision to withhold the information on the basis of a non-existent criminal inquiry.

The panels still appear to be fixed to the building at Shepherd’s Court – with the exception of six floors on one side, where fire damage is still visible and tarpaulin sheets are draped across the building. Identical panels appear to be in use on three neighbouring towers: Bush Court, Woodford Court and Roseford Court. The LFB warned in a letter to Hammersmith & Fulham in October that it “believes the panels have been used in neighbouring buildings”. It has also written a warning to all local authorities in London.

Plainly this is an issue of major concern to the sector and anyone who manages tower blocks. Arnold Tarling, a chartered surveyor at Hindwoods and a fire safety expert, says: “I’m worried about cladding systems in general. For a long time, people have been attaching things to the outside of buildings for insulation.

“It can be a catastrophic problem, particularly when flames can get in through windows and a ‘stay put’ policy is in place.”

What is clear is that Hammersmith & Fulham was not aware of the potential risk posed by the panels attached to the outside of one of its buildings. Other social landlords could be in the same position.

It is hoped they will discover any issues and deal with them before another tragedy occurs.