Investigation: Safe as houses?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Three years on from the Grenfell tower tragedy, are building safety standards really what they should be?
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Guest:
Martina Lees, Senior property writer for the Times and Sunday Times.
Danielle Mikkelsen, school teacher, mother of two and victim of a devastating block fire.
Host: David Aaronovitch
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats. |
| 0:11.0 | So you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone else's. |
| 0:15.0 | Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. The whole block was splintering and crackling. I realized this wasn't actually a small balcony fire. The whole side of the building was on fire. |
| 0:47.0 | I was scared that there might be some sort of explosion and I was just mindful that I needed to get the boys away and get them to a safe place. |
| 0:58.0 | I felt absolutely terrified. Three years on from the Grenfell Tower Block tragedy and you'd have thought that we were all wiser and safer by now. But today we catch up with |
| 1:15.8 | a family whose new home nearly cost them their lives. And we ask, are building safety standards really what they should be? |
| 1:24.6 | You're listening to stories of our times and the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:29.2 | I'm David Aronovich. Today, safe as houses. Why you'd better hope not. |
| 1:37.0 | I have been writing about property for about 10 years now. |
| 1:46.0 | That's Martina Lees. |
| 1:48.0 | She's the senior property writer for the Times and Sunday Times. |
| 1:52.0 | Martina's dedicated the best part of a year now to |
| 1:54.2 | investigating housing standards in the UK. |
| 1:57.0 | I first got on to the cladding scandal is I went to a meeting at Parliament with leaseholders and someone asked a question to say how many of you have |
| 2:09.5 | cladding problems and lots of people put up their hands. |
| 2:12.8 | And then I said, how many of you have other kinds of planning |
| 2:17.3 | problems that's not just grain fell, please keep your hands in the air, |
| 2:22.2 | just a few put them down. |
| 2:23.4 | That was the first time I realized that this is about much more than Grenfell. About a year ago there was a fire at a block called Richmond House in South London in a neighborhood called Worcester Park. It happened in the early hours of the morning. |
| 2:46.2 | The Mikkelson family only woke up to the fire because their little baby was sleeping in |
| 2:51.2 | their bed and wasn't sleeping. |
| 2:53.2 | We were woken by Jesse at around 1230. |
... |
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