Cladding in the spotlight in wake of major London fire

Last June’s fire at London’s Grenfell Tower will sadly be remembered for many years both within and outside the firefighting fraternity, and it will be interesting to see what conclusions the official enquiry comes to, and what lessons can be learned to enhance fire safety measures in multi-storey tower blocks – including those across the NHS hospital estate housing patients – in the future. Speaking in a timely address at October’s Healthcare Estates 2017 conference, Phil Gibbs, MSc, EngTech, GIFireE, Healthcare Partnerships officer at London Fire Brigade, took a broad-ranging look at the topic of ‘Cladding on hospital premises’. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Phil Gibbs began a concise but informative presentation on a very topical subject by explaining that he is the London Fire Brigade’s lead office for fire safety in healthcare, and that he would be focusing on ‘some of the key issues around cladding on hospital premises’. He told the audience: “For those of you that have had some involvement in this area over the past 5-6 months, the issue may have been confusing or frustrating, while in other cases you may be experts. While I do not fall into the latter category, what I plan to do today is to summarise the cladding issue from the beginning of the period of heightened interest in the subject in healthcare to the current position from the LFB’s standpoint.”

Although, Phil Gibbs emphasised, his conference address would ‘not be all about Grenfell Tower’, nor would it attribute any particular cause to the devastating blaze at the multi-storey block in central London on 14 June last year, he said that ‘what we do know is that the building was covered in a particular type of cladding, which resulted in the instigation of a national investigation to look at buildings with similar cladding’. He elaborated: “Initially the investigative work was restricted to blocks of flats above 18 metres high.”