Peter Bill on Wednesday

GRENFELL TOWER • Owners of PRS and student accommodation will surely be surveying existing higher-rise stock and reviewing specifications for unbuilt towers • How about a wholly government funded, wholly accountable, Housing Disasters Prevention Commission? • Commercial landlords beware: your duty of care stands exposed to more searching hindsight. Private rented sector landlords and owners of student accommodation will be surveying existing higher-rise stock and reviewing specifications for unbuilt towers with searing hindsight produced by the Grenfell Tower disaster. Ditto housing associations and private developers. The yet-to-be-assembled government inquiry panel will have a parallel agenda. What existing stock remains vulnerable? How to prevent repeat tragedies on future developments? We remain in the panic-and-hysteria phase of the story nine days on, with mob and media justice being meted out to whoever comes into range. Why? Because it’s hard to blame an amorphous system that allows manufacturers to design tests for their own products in isolation, paying for the results from testing bodies who court them as clients. Beyond that, let’s skip the blame game. What can be done to prevent a repeat? Needed: a government-funded watchdog Easy to specify, harder to enact. Still, let’s have a go: anyone building or wholly refurbishing more than, say, 10 dwellings will need to use materials, or, I stress, combinations of materials, approved by a government-funded watchdog. Let’s call it the Housing Disasters Prevention Commission. A bit OTT, but the form of the title should make the function utterly clear. Ban the word “research”. The collapse of Ronan Point in 1968 happened, despite the concrete panel system being approved by the Building Research Establishment. At 5:45 am on 16 May, Ivy Hodge went into her kitchen in a corner flat on the 18th floor, and lit a match to light the stove. A gas explosion blew out the load-bearing panel, bringing the side of the block down. A review of the building regulations banned any more houses being assembled using large concrete cards. Give tenants a voice At Grenfell Tower the probable cause is narrowing down to an exploding fridge. The HDPC supervisory board needs to recruit at least one-third of its members from consumer and tenant groups. Who else is going to say “what happens if a stove/fridge blows up?” Even then, outside voices and the editorial freedom brought by using taxpayer money isn’t enough. Somebody needs to be accountable and know beforehand they will be accountable. The HPDC boss needs to be in no doubt: they and their successors will carry the can for anything approved that somehow leads to another building disaster. How to pay for the new body? An easy question. One that the Treasury could answer in 10 minutes by counting up the grants and subsidies that go towards making homes affordable to housing association tenants and first-time buyers. Salami slice a small portion to fund the HDPC. Those in council homes will approve. Commercial landlords need to feel the heat Commercial landlords and agents who feel the Grenfell Tower disaster is not salient to the sector should read the article on corporate manslaughter in EG on 17 June (pp 62-64). Ben Mack of Malcolm Hollis offered thoughts sufficient to freeze the blood of anyone who deals in offices, shops and sheds. He said the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter Act introduced a new offence: death resulting from the “gross failure” by an organisation can lead to imprisonment of culpable staff. Landlords have a duty of care under the 2015 Construction (Design and Management) regulations, which cover repair and maintenance. They “need to ensure they are doing everything by the book as tenants are becoming more pro-active in terms of health and safety checks,” warned Mack. Deadlines being what they are, this advice was written before the Grenfell Tower became a Roman candle and left 79 dead. Peter Bill is the author of Planet Property and a former editor of EG. Follow him on Twitter