Daily: Death Trap Homes – The post-Grenfell cladding scandal

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics, Government

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Even after the horror of the Grenfell Fire, millions of people are still living in homes with cheap, inflammable cladding – and the effort to fix it has stalled. Steve Cole, head of corporate strategy at the housing association Clarion, and Inside Housing’s award-winning editor Peter Apps tell Naomi Smith about a scandal that’s been inexcusably neglected, how austerity paved the way for this tragedy, and how to force the Government to take action before another disaster. “There are up to 4.6m flats affected by dangerous cladding and that’s 11m people. That’s equivalent to the entire population of London.” – Peter Apps “British homes are like US cars. They’re only energy efficient because they run on cheap fuel.” – Steve Cole “Why should the taxpayer pay to fix a problem of the construction industry?” – Peter Apps “Regulation isn’t worth much of it’s not enforced… Austerity took a lot of expertise and enforcement out of local government.” – Steve Cole Presented by Naomi Smith. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jacob Archbold and Jelena Sofrenijevic. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
0:22.0	Phoenix Group is the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business.
0:28.0	Search Phoenix Group living longer.
0:30.0	Pets brings so much joy.
0:32.0	From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa
0:36.7	so give a little love back with dental life from Purina a range of delicious chues made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets, teeth and gums, essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so look after
0:55.9	theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome back to the bunker daily I'm Neremy Smith. It's been nearly four years
1:17.4	since an inferno tour through Grenfell Tower in West London leaving 72 dead and 74 injured. In 2012 the tower had been renovated and part of those works included the addition of aluminium composite cladding to the exterior of the building, cladding which of course has
1:34.7	now been determined highly flammable. A more fire resistant form of the cladding had been
1:40.8	turned down by the Kensington and Chelsea tenant management organisation
1:45.2	due to higher costs. As is so often the case, knowing the cost of everything and the
1:49.8	value of nothing can have catastrophic outcomes.
1:54.0	Grenville Tower is just one of thousands of other buildings in the UK to have been clad with this material.
1:59.0	And since the fire, it's reported that just 200 or so of those buildings have now been made safe.
2:05.4	This means that millions of people are still living in unsafe homes.
2:09.6	And because they're unsafe, many residents are also struggling financially, partly because the properties have
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Podmasters, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Podmasters and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.