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Council serves improvement notice on converted office block

Lambeth Council in London has served an improvement notice on a converted office block that has been turned into flats.

Officers served the notice on the owners of Norwich House Apartments, listing several remedial actions required, including the removal of aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding of the type used at Grenfell Tower.

The block, on Streatham High Road, houses 103 flats over six storeys, with commercial units on the ground floor. Its conversion from an office block was enabled by “permitted development rights”, which Lambeth Council has previously been critical of.

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A council inspection in August identified “serious and significant fire safety deficiencies”, including the presence of ACM cladding shown to be the highest risk (category 3). Inspectors also reported issues with the building’s fire safety systems, service cupboards being used to store combustible materials, an insufficiently protected seventh-storey boiler room and a malfunctioning smoke extraction system.

The Norwich House owners and their management company were alerted to the problems, and ordered to make improvements related to the CCTV system, smoke alarms and smoke extraction, and their evacuation strategy.

The council has now served an improvement notice on the owners of Norwich House, following consultation with the London Fire Brigade, setting out the action needed to make the building safe. The owners will need to remove the ACM cladding within a year, but the other works will be required within four months.

The owners have appointed a firm of fire engineers, have repaired the smoke extraction system and are working on the CCTV and fire alarms. They have also informed the council that they plan to remove the cladding with financial help from the Government’s ACM remediation fund.

Councillor Jennifer Brathwaite, deputy leader of the Council (Housing and Homelessness), said: “Lambeth Council has a responsibility to ensure all tower blocks in our borough – council-owned and privately-owned – meet the highest safety standards.

“The need to protect residents in all our tower blocks has been even more acute since the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, and we have worked hard to deal with the risks posed by ACM since then.

“Where we find there is work needed to ensure the safety of residents, we will take whatever action is necessary. We’ve told the owners of this building what work is required, and we’re committed to working closely with them to ensure these improvements are carried out quickly, safely, and with minimal disruption to residents.”