Councillor 'Gobsmacked' At Inaction Over Fire Risk

A councillor said that she was “gobsmacked” because no one seemed to take responsibility for a series of failings that resulted in the rushed closure of New England House.

Brighton and Hove City Council came under fire from tenants after closing the building with almost no notice last November because of fire safety concerns.

Although it later reopened, tenants will have to relocate while the tower block – home to dozens of small businesses – is either made safe or demolished.

As well as being astonished, Conservative councillor Anne Meadows also asked whether lessons had truly been learnt after a succession of vital reports appeared to have been ignored.

And Green councillor Pete West said that the failings not only went from the top to the bottom of the council but life-threatening warnings were kept from elected members.

He said that the dangers facing tenants had been known about since July 2020 but nothing was done until the emergency closure last November.

The saga played out at the council’s Audit, Standards and General Purposes Committee meeting at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Tuesday 24 June).

Councillors were told that a “lessons learnt” exercise had focused on decisions made between 2020 and the November closure but not what had happened since.

The council’s chief executive Jess Gibbons said that she took the decision to close New England House temporarily – and had not taken it lightly.

She was relatively new in post but said that the closure had been necessary because she was presented with a fire report that identified an “intolerable risk to life”.

She told the committee that she was shocked that it had taken so long to bring about action, given the first concerning fire safety report on New England House dated from 2020.

Ms Gibbons, who joined the council in May last year, said that there had been a lack of clarity about officials’ roles and responsibilities, inadequate contract management, poor record-keeping and a lack of action.

She said:

“These are serious issues and we’ve been taking them very seriously since our colleagues presented the findings to me and to officers and we’ve taken a number of significant steps.”

Councillor Meadows said that the managing agent, Avison Young, whose details were redacted in the committee papers, reported that the fire risks were “ok” until July 2023.

At that point, specialist firm Morgan Sindall raised the alarm after a fire door and “compartmentation” survey which should have been given immediate attention.

Ms Gibbons said that Councillor Meadows’s concern about lessons from the delayed response were a key point of the audit. Risks had been highlighted in July 2020 and again in 2023.

Work had been done after the latest audit, the chief executive said, to ensure that officials understood their roles so that safety alerts led to action to keep buildings safe.

Councillor Meadows said:

“It’s just unbelievable that no officer picked up on this and took responsibility to say: ‘Hang on!

"We’ve got a problem.’ It didn’t take much, really. I’m just absolutely gobsmacked.”

Councillor West, who chairs the audit committee, said that the council needed to show that it had learnt lessons as publicly as possible.

He said:

“The failings go all the way from the bottom, from operation and project management point of view, to senior officer governance level.

“The fact that fire safety concerns were known about in July 2020 … and for some reason those fire safety issues were not reported to members (councillors) …

“This, to me, is in so many ways the most serious matter because officers were unaccountable for their actions and I’m sure that members of all parties … would have been deeply concerned and we might have seen different actions taken five years ago.”

The meeting was told that work was still continuing on analysing what had happened, how to improve things and on New England House’s future.

The council had also awarded a new commercial property management contract from the start of next month after Avison Young’s contract reached the end of its term.

Ms Gibbons said that the new contract “strengthens performance monitoring”, with “clearer expectations around compliance and reporting”.

The Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, said that the council was asking itself questions, establishing what had gone wrong, learning the lessons and trying to improve.

Councillor Taylor said that a project to redevelop the building, which had £10 million funding towards an estimated £24 million cost, had not been treated as a priority, having been considered unviable.

He said:

“There are no final decisions made on what will happen to New England House but we should be clear and learn as a council and a city.

“The economic role played by those tenants in the building, particularly the intersection with the creative industries, start-ups and with the high-tech new businesses, and the role that provides in spurring on our economy and providing local jobs is really important.

“Future decisions … may involve a separate building, a new building. It may involve refurbishment.

“We’ve got to keep in mind that money was granted through a ‘city deal’ for a project in a building like this to continue because it’s really valuable to the local economy.”

The committee is due to receive an update on the progress of actions from the “lessons learnt” audit in six months.