Lib Dem group leader Councillor Tom Simon says Camden has run out of excuses for not doing safety works

A SCATHING report has revealed how thousands of council tenants have been put at risk due to fire safety failures.

Camden has been put on notice by the Government’s social housing regulator that it must take speedy action to make its homes safe.

Around 9,000 have not been fitted with a smoke alarm and a queue of overdue work has built up.

The council was fined £500,000 earlier this year after pleading guilty to failing to make a block in Hampstead safe before 35-year-old Magdalena Fink died in a fire. The case led to an investigation by the Regulator of Social Housing which issued a regulatory notice on Friday.

Leader of the Opposition, Liberal Democrat councillor Tom Simon, said: “The regulator’s findings are staggering. Magdalena Fink died in November 2017 because Camden had failed to do urgent work identified in 2013.

After a damning inquest, they promised to put things right. They told the court they had earlier this year.

A fatal fire in Daleham Gardens in 2017 led to an investigation into the safety of Camden’s council housing

But the RSH has found ‘long-standing’ failure and that Camden is currently in breach of regulations. Enough excuses, enough failure. Labour-run Camden must get its act together before there is a further tragedy.”

RSH chief Kate Dodsworth said: “Through our investigation, we found that Camden Council has failed to address thousands of fire safety actions in its tenants’ homes. This is unacceptable and has put tenants at potential risk of harm.”

The regulator’s report said that while the council had completed fire-risk assessments for 3,200 blocks that required one, there were remaining 9,000 “fire remedial actions currently overdue”, with around 1,500 of them being overdue since 2020.

The report said evidence showed “a longstanding failure by Camden to complete all fire safety remedial actions in a timely manner”, adding: “Tenants have been, and continue to be, exposed to potential harm.”

It added: “We found that there are just under 400 high-risk actions overdue. Of these, a third should have been completed within 10 days and the remainder in 30 days.”

The report said a particular concern was that more than 9,000 homes in Camden “do not have a hard-wired smoke alarm installed” while just under 4,000 properties had no carbon monoxide detector installed.

In the case of Ms Fink’s death, a now-demolished block in Daleham Gardens had twice been recommended for urgent fire safety doors and removal of wooden cladding, in 2013 and 2017, but nothing was done.

Council leader Labour councillor Georgia Gould

Responding to the regulator’s report this week, council leader Georgia Gould – who has described fire safety as a “first priority” for the Labour council – said: “There is nothing more important than the safety of our residents and we are taking this notice very seriously. Six years ago, I said fire safety was our first priority and that we would invest in a new era of resident safety.

“We have done exactly that. We are investing more than £200million in a wide range of safety improvements; we’ve published all fire-risk assessments (FRAs) and carried out more than 40,000 individual safety improvements and repairs.”

But she added: “I won’t be content until every action is complete and that’s what our teams are working on delivering right now.”

Cllr Gould called on the Government to back the council “after years of underinvestment nationally in council housing”, adding: “We want every resident to live in a safe, damp-free, high-quality home.”

It is not clear how much money an incoming Labour government would invest in council housing at this stage, and last week Sir Keir Starmer and the frontbench team said there were tough decisions to make on spending.

Frontbencher Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, said “there’s no money left”.

The council said it had struggled to access some homes to make improvements but that a new universal key system was being brought in following the regulator’s ruling.