Southwark council spent £1.6m on botched fire doors
By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter
A town hall spent £1.6m on botched fire doors and safety works across two estates.
Southwark council splashed the cash on refurbishments on the Canada estate in Rotherhithe and the Dickens estate in Bermondsey.
A Freedom of Information request revealed the local authority forked out £1,263,736 on “fire upgrade works” on the Canada estate.
Southwark spent another £371,720 on fire safety works on the Dickens estate.
The council installed new fire doors at the Columbia Point and Regina Point tower blocks on the Canada estate around a decade ago.
It carried out the works after a 2009 blaze in council-owned Lakanal House in Camberwell killed six people.
But Canada estate residents soon began complaining about the quality of the works.
A report published last year confirmed their worst fears, finding that the blocks’ fire doors had been poorly installed. The council is yet to confirm when the doors will be replaced.
Figures revealed by the Freedom of Information request show the council spent just over half a million on fire works on each tower block, Columbia Point and Regina Point, while another £129,000 was spent on “preliminaries.”
On the Dickens estate, Southwark splashed £126,965 on fire doors and other works at Bardell House and £244,754 on similar works at neighbouring Wade House.
Southwark installed new fire doors at the two blocks on Dickens estate in 2014 but later found out they hadn’t been fitted properly. They were replaced in 2019 at the contractor’s expense.
Darren Merill, the council’s cabinet member for council homes and homelessness, admitted to Southwark News in July that the doors were “defective.”
He told the News: “The fire doors installed by our contractor were found to be defective, which needed to be addressed. We asked the original contractor to fix the problem, at their cost, not charged to residents, which they were happy to do.”
Southwark council has been contacted.
Columbia Point on the Canada estate with Regina Point in the background (Picture: Robert Firth)
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