Structural stability: is the UK heading towards a new building safety crisis?

There are also concerns about modular housing, which the minutes said is “reminiscent in system terms of Ronan Point, with modules stacked up and connected in some way”.

“Some within CROSS have questioned if this method in its present form is suitable for tall buildings,” the minutes add. 

This ties into another story Inside Housing broke earlier this year – that a report into the structural and fire safety of modular blocks was delivered to government in summer 2022, and was initially scheduled for publication in September before being stopped by ministers. Sources have told Inside Housing this was due to concern about its impact on the industry. 

But amid all of these issues were two which the group felt were critical in public safety terms: LPS buildings and RAAC. 

At a meeting in February 2022, they decided that the government needed to act. The initial plan was to establish the number of LPS buildings and buildings with RAAC, and to estimate their risk profile.

The work to establish LPS buildings would build on a 1984 survey, and involve a letter to councils and housing associations asking them for further details. 

The concern, they said, was that many “LPS buildings which were supposed to have undergone remedial work in previous decades were not remediated”.

“A member with extensive experience in the structural analysis of LPS buildings indicated that many were not strengthened post Ronan Point,” the minutes say. “The member suggested that a view should be taken by government at a national level across the whole LPS estate as to what is an acceptable risk level for these buildings, combined with standardised risk mitigation measures.”

“[Mr Rowley] summarised by saying we have known about this problem for 55 years, we haven’t been able to quantify it, we’re not clear who is responsible for it and now we want to spend a year collecting data on it, but we don’t know what we’re going to do when we get it – is that right?”

The RAAC work, meanwhile, would have involved a three-stage process, crossing government departments in acknowledgement of the fact that the material is found “in buildings such as schools, hospitals, airports, shopping centres, offices and hotels”.

“RAAC in certain circumstances is believed to be liable to collapse without prior warning,” the minutes said. 

In November 2022, they reached “agreement that the two areas of research were necessary”.

The submission to green light the research landed on the desk of building safety minister Lee Rowley on 16 December 2022. 

His office responded on 16 January. But he does not appear to have agreed that the matter was as urgent as the experts felt.

As The Guardian reported last month, the response told officials to carry out a “substantial rewrite” of the submission, and to “make really clear what meaningful options are available, including the ‘do nothing’ [option]”. 

“[Mr Rowley] summarised by saying we have known about this problem for 55 years, we haven’t been able to quantify it, we’re not clear who is responsible for it and now we want to spend a year collecting data on it, but we don’t know what we’re going to do when we get it – is that right?” his office wrote.

This does not appear to have sat well with the official who drafted the submission. They responded two days  later, writing: “The department’s objective could be seen as the avoidance of another Grenfell-scale tragedy. Particularly with regard to LPS, the ‘do nothing’ option is not one I recommend based on the evidence we have.”

RAAC is concrete with air bubbles and no coarse aggregate. This means it is light and cheap, but also a structural danger – particularly when it has been exposed to water due to leaks. It can collapse without prior warning and is sometimes said to have a lifespan of just 30 years. 

It was widely used in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, so many buildings that include it in the UK are well beyond this expiry date. It was used across the construction industry, from homes, to courts, to hospitals, to airports, but so far the only major efforts to discover it have been in the education and health sectors. It is believed to have been used in social housing.  

Richard Crow, a partner in housing consultancy and head of Rapleys’ Birmingham office, previously told Inside Housing: “There is no way to say which properties have RAAC other than to inspect properties containing flat roofs, built during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. During this period, the largest number of social housing was built, so it will be a case of urgent, thorough inspection across the country by local authorities, and for those that do have it – our figures of 5-10% were based on the investigations we are working on within schools – putting in place the solutions to ensure they are protected against damage.” 

Philip Morris, a chartered architect and managing director of Philip Morris Consulting, previously told Inside Housing: “It was good for the roofs of buildings, cladding panels and floors. It was widely used by municipal architects in council housing projects.”

He said he has seen particular issues on roofs where water ingress had impacted the junction between the RAAC plank in the roof and the wall. “RAAC concrete absorbs water. It’s like a sponge. You increase the load because you’ve got all these holes filling with water and, all of a sudden, you’re increasing the loading on the end of that plank and that’s when we end up with collapse,” he said. 

The Regulator of Social Housing advised social landlords to carry out surveys in September to establish the presence or otherwise of RAAC. A snap survey by Inside Housing showed that 68% (24) out of 34 respondents have carried out at least some surveys since then. These landlords collectively own 494,000 homes and had surveyed around 8,500 of the highest-risk properties. Many had carried out desktop checks for a larger number. None had any RAAC present – although one said it had eight blocks where the material could not be ruled out, and further investigations were planned. These are early figures but do appear to confirm the regulator’s belief that the material is “not widespread” in social housing.

However, the survey respondents do not include Aberdeen Council, so far the only social landlord to have made a public statement about the likely use of RAAC. 

Last month, it told residents of the Balnagask Estate in the south-east of the city that the material was “likely to have been used” in their homes. 

If it is found, the remediation will be complex. Mark Curtis, an associate director at building consultancy Brawdia, says: “If RAAC is found, the remediation work would very much depend on the configuration of the building, and whether there’s the means to add a further support framework beneath the RAAC to support it. If you can’t physically make alterations within the building to carry the load of the RAAC, the only remediation you have is to remove it completely. If it is a roof structure, that can render the building uninhabitable during the remediation.” 

Days later, the official would resign, saying their position “has become increasingly difficult in relation to the range of important structural safety concerns I am dealing with”. 

“The Grenfell Inquiry highlights the responsibility civil servants bear when working technical policy with potentially catastrophic life-safety implications,” they wrote. “However, the organisational structure of DLUHC does not allow such problems to be addressed in a meaningful way.”

The email listed the various concerns raised by the working group and said that “after a year of negotiating [with] the DLUHC hierarchy only the first two issues have made it into a submission… and even this has been sent back with the request for a substantial rewrite”. 

To date, the recommended research into LPS buildings has not taken place. Neither has DLUHC taken overall responsibility for RAAC, with piecemeal efforts by other government departments all that is being done. 

Housing providers are largely being left to work it out for themselves: the regulator has told them to investigate, but the government has been clear that what to do is their responsibility.

In Leeds, like many other parts of the country, this lack of overall leadership leaves the council stuck with a decision about what to do with its LPS blocks.

Stuart MacIntosh has lived in Bailey Towers – one of the blocks facing demolition – since he became homeless seven years ago. He said the news of its planned demolition was “the best news I had received in years”. 

“You just can’t get the place warm,” he tells Inside Housing. “I have dreaded every winter since I’ve lived here.” 

He cannot afford private rents in the city, and says living in the block has had a major impact on his mental health. The recent Storm Babet saw rain water come directly through the walls, causing black mould and drenching the curtains in his daughter’s room. “This happens every year,” he says.

There are 167 households still present in the five blocks in the Aldertons and Gipton Gates estates, with rehousing having been carried out gradually over the course of a year. 

For Leeds, though, it is a challenge. It has estimated £4m from the Housing Revenue Account to rehouse residents and develop design proposals for just five blocks.

Demolition costs were estimated at £7.67m, and that is before any new homes are built in their place. The other six will add £17.7m, taking the total bill to £29.37m before a single brick of replacement housing is laid. 

The addition of hundreds of households who will be given priority rehousing status will also not help housing pressures in a city that already has 26,000 households on its waiting list.

A Leeds City Council spokesperson said: “The decision to review the LPS blocks’ place in the council’s housing stock was due to a recognition that these blocks had exceeded their original design life and would require significant investment to bring them in line with the standard required for current housing stock. A full range of options to move forward were appraised, resulting in the decision to demolish being recommended due to the significant cost of refurbishment work.”

This crisis is waiting to spread around the country, and there are fears it could prove to be much bigger than just LPS blocks. 

“We have been massively concerned for the 40 years that our campaign has existed that the government isn’t taking this seriously enough,” says Danielle Gregory, a member of the grassroots campaign Tower Blocks UK, which has been pushing for the risk of LPS blocks to be taken more seriously since it formed in the 1980s. 

“We are convinced that if something isn’t done we are likely to see the collapse of an LPS building in this country. What we’re asking the government to do is a national audit of tower blocks, specifically looking at LPS. With every new housing minister that comes in, we write to them with our concerns, but quite often we don’t get a reply. We get ignored. It’s not just frustrating, it’s dangerous. The government is shirking its responsibility on this one.”

We can only hope that it does not result in disaster. 

As of 2018, there were an estimated 575 ageing large panel system (LPS) social housing blocks in England. Some have been demolished since, but the majority are still standing. Some may not even have been identified.  

“Records from the 1960s and ’70s are sparse. So it’s possible that a local authority or housing association has an LPS building but they don’t know about it yet. So the first thing for [them] to do is to identify and create a register of LPS buildings,” says Dr Alastair Soane, a principal consultant at CROSS and a chartered structural engineer.  

“The next step then would be to get the LPS building looked at by a suitably qualified surveyor, which usually means in conjunction with a chartered structural engineer.”

The age of the building is relevant, but there is no absolute guide. “All buildings and structures deteriorate over time, and that can be exacerbated by poor design, construction, maintenance or weathering,” adds Dr Soane. “But you cannot say a building has a definitive lifespan.
An LPS building which has been inspected and well maintained will usually perform better than one where that has not happened.”

Getting somebody competent to review it is crucial. Steve Cross, a partner at consultancy Ridge, says: “There’s an element of false comfort that some social landlords have had, because they have had a review from a structural engineer who is not a specialist. They might be competent engineers, but they need to be competent at assessing LPS because it is a completely different ballgame.” 

“What an engineer will be looking at very closely is the robustness of the structure,” says Dr Soane. “That might include some intrusive inspection, but it depends very much on the individual building.” 

The deterioration of the building might lead to other risks short of collapse: chunks falling off the building, or cracks opening up that pose a risk in fire or make living in the building uncomfortable because they become cold and wet.

Sometimes this can be fixed – for example with carbon fibre or steel supports that hold the large panels of concrete together. But this work, along with what is necessary to make the building safe and comfortable, can be vastly expensive. Demolition might be the option social landlords prefer, but even this is specialist work.  

“If you’re taking one of these blocks down, you have to be a lot more precise than you would with a normal reinforced concrete frame. You’ve got to understand what you’re dealing with,” says Mr Cross. “It’s deconstruction rather than demolition and you need specialist contractors to do it properly.”

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the government has introduced some of the toughest building safety regulations in the world through its landmark Building Safety Act. The act also introduced a new Building Safety Regulator to assess the safety and standards of all buildings, to monitor and investigate any potential risks or changes that may affect residents’ safety, and to oversee a culture of higher standards throughout our built environment.

“The Building Safety Regulator actively monitors structural and fire risks across the built environment and advises government on any action that may be needed.”

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