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| Daily Echo Front Page After Redbridge Towers Fire Photo: Southampton Independents |
Southampton Independents listens to residents and acts with residents, because we are residents too.
Since the Redbridge Towers fire in 2017, we have protected residents with our fire safety campaign.
At this link is a video of Councillor Andrew Pope, who was our Redbridge ward councillor. He appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live, showing fire safety breaches in Council tower blocks in International Way in Weston, Southampton.
This was in 2018, six months after the Grenfell disaster in London. A full transcript of the video is below:
Andrew Pope
Southampton Independents Councillor
on Southampton City Council
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| Councillor Andrew Pope on BBC Photo: Southampton Independents |
"We're now at Rotterdam Towers and immediately on coming here we've seen some fire safety issues with the fire doors at the entrance to the building.
This is a fire door here and the next door we come across is another fire door, this just stays three or four inches open.
And, the next one we come to is another fire door and that's also three or four inches open, as well. Not functioning as a fire door.
And we've been to the top floor and we've seen fire doors there and on other floors that aren't closing properly. We've even seen a fire door where the handle is half hanging off.
So it's quite disgraceful what we've seen.
We haven't had to look very hard, and we've already seen huge numbers of failures of fire safety within Rotterdam Towers."
Dr Stephen Battersby
Environmental Health Expert:
"It's absolutely amazing to think that after Grenfell Tower, six months after Grenfell Tower, that these conditions still exist and nobody has clearly looked at fire risks in this building and remedied the problems that increase the fire risk.
It means that their safety is at risk.
Any responsible landlord would certainly have ensured that fire doors fit properly, and work as fire doors.
Those fire doors don't fulfill their basic function.
And one doesn't have to be an expert in either fire safety or the housing health and safety rating system, to see that these are problems that ought to be, ought to have been remedied immediately."
Southampton City Council "say they are undertaking an extensive programme of improvements to all their tower blocks... including the installation of sprinklers and the inspection of fire doors."