Tag Archives: Estate Management

BARTON HOUSE: A BUILDING PROFESSIONAL WRITES

An NHS property professional writes:

Barton House

What a concerning (but unsurprising) mess this Barton House disaster is:

1. When building professionals assess a commercial building’s condition we – in my work life experience – work on an expected ‘life’ of 60 years.

2. Commercial organisations and public bodies with corporate manslaughter / public safety accountability have a duty of care. They therefore would want to evidence they had carried out regular (no more than 5 years apart in my experience) condition surveys to assess cyclical maintenance need / cost rate and ‘life remaining’ of the structure and fabric.

3. When end of life was approaching, they would want to commence contingency plans to replace the building OR (preferably) assess what is needed to retain it in a safe condition for x more years, allowing for planned major spend as necessary. It’s called good building management, professional responsibility and life cycle estate planning! Oh! And duty of care!

4. In the NHS, in my experience working for multiple NHS Trusts, we (every NHS organisation) were mandated to have a Major Incident Plan (MIP) for everything we could conceivably expect to go wrong (yup, including a pandemic) and have a ‘plan’ in place. This would be documented, regularly updated and occasionally acted out along with major responders. A real example being a suspected bomb being unearthed in work around the Haymarket leading to the wholescale evacuation of the BRI. I wonder what the BCC MIP was for a Grenfell etc type disaster?

4). The above said, 3 questions:

A. If a similarly constructie (I believe, I’m still investigating) building started to collapse (Ronan Point) in 1968, 10 yrs after Barton House was constructed, I’d assume VERY regular surveys would be carried out to asses and determine any movement or other concerns. If something went wrong, you would want to assure the public, the courts etc that you were on top of the issues and ‘managing’ one’s estate to assure of being in control, of professional estate management competence.

B. On a 60 year expected life this building was past its expected life in 2018. So what’s happened since? What was documented as BCC’s ‘plan’ for Barton House? 

C) How many other Large Panel System (LPS) exist in Bristol? Or indeed around the country? 

One has to conclude that it appears, from current revelations, that BCC has not / is not competently managing its estate which, after experiences such as Ronan, Grenfall etc, is a grave public concern. 

FOIs will be submitted as above.  Those poor tenants / occupants deserve so much better especially from a council which has introduced a licensing system to ensure private landlords provide adequate safe accommodation.

Glasshouses and stones ….

DROOPER PLAYS THE FERRET SHIT GAMBIT

FERRET SHIT GAMBIT web

While homelessness in the city has increased by 40 PER CENT in a year and the housing crisis grips tighter, the council’s useless Tory boy housing boss, NICK “DROOPER” HOOPER seems to have found himself far more important things to do than deal with these … Such as setting up a, er, SPY NETWORK to catch council tenants he dislikes!

Over at Antona Court in Shire, residence of local firebrand and friend of the Bristolian Steve “The Avon Mouth” Norman, Drooper seems to have set up an INTELLIGENCE NETWORK with the sole aim of skewering Steve for er, something or other.

Last year Drooper THREATENED Steve, registered disabled, with EVICTION for parking his car too near a door at Antona Court soon after he had had threatened Steve with an ASBO for delivering a letter to his councillor in Avonmouth Library.

The eviction threat was hastily dropped, however, when Steve instructed Drooper to cease his “FUTILE BULLYING EXERCISE” and take him to court and evict him if he had a case. A course of action Drooper appears to not want to pursue. Wonder why?

Since then, Drooper’s brilliant spy network has uncovered lots of wrongdoing at Antona Court such as an ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS car repair business working from the car park; an ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS drug dealer in the block and an ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS sub letting resident!

However, not one to get deterred by having poor quality fabricated evidence exposed, Drooper simply widened his net across Antona Court to unearth all kinds of entirely NON-CRIMINAL ACTIVITY among the tenants such as a resident who hoards stuff; dog shit on the grass outside the flats and even a woman who keeps ferrets!

Unfortunately we’re unable to confirm, at this stage, whether those ferrets are shitting on the lawn too. Or whether Drooper has launched an expensive HIGH LEVEL INVESTIGATION with a view to issuing the world’s first ferret shit-related eviction threat in the history of social housing? If that doesn’t earn Drooper his £15k a year “uplift band” then what will? (solving the city’s homeless problem? ed.)

But how is Drooper obtaining all this top quality intelligence? Well, a brief saunter around the perimeter of Antona Court reveals that ONE RESIDENT – and one resident only – has taken delivery of a brand new garden box courtesy of Drooper’s housing department. Why would that be?

Is Drooper running a garden furniture for DAFT INFORMATION ring out of Antona Court? And will the council give us all a couple of deckchairs and some pot plants if we phone in our ferret shit-related concerns direct to Drooper? (Call 0117 922 4681 quoting ‘ferret shit emergency’).

We also understand that this lucky Antona Court resident has now been instructed by Drooper’s SHADOWY AGENTS (or Estate Management, Housing Services,North, Temple Street, ed.) to keep a diary of events at Antona Court, which we’re really looking forward to reading. Our own spies tell us that it might feature sensational revelations about residents’ friends visiting during daylight hours and people using the communal laundry after 8.00pm.

Clearly this entirely normal behaviour by council tenants must be stamped out and order restored at Antona Court.