please empty your brain below
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It reflects a trend for deaths by fire in London decreasing since the Millennium that these stations were not needed. It’s also raised several millions for public purse. Nothing to see here.
Mark | 17.06.19 - 7:07 a.m. | #
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Many thanks for this, DG, a very timely reminder of another foul-up by the duplicitous scumbag that is BoJo, given the obsequious piece about his mayoral tenure in yesterday's Sunday Times by Andrew Gilligan. Sadly I believe it is too late to prevent this man being inflicted on us, driven not by reason and morality, but by the self interest of Tory MPs thinking he is their best chance of hanging onto their seats come the inevitable early election when the Brexit process finally all falls apart.
J. | 17.06.19 - 7:11 a.m. | #
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Your link to expert advice is to a BBC news item. The expert advice was provided in support of a reduction in fire stations highlighting the considerable reduction in demand. As with Met Police Station closures the speed of their redevelopment has been unimpressive
ner | 17.06.19 - 7:15 a.m. | #
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"Affordable housing" is a scam: the rich pay lower wages and pocket a public subsidy, the poor are trapped because they can no longer afford to move. It's modern day serfdom. Is that really what "most Londoners" wanted for these buildings?
lmm | 17.06.19 - 7:51 a.m. | #
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You can only sell off a public asset once. This bodged sale has not provided value, either socially or economically.
David | 17.06.19 - 8:48 a.m. | #
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"Affordable housing" has a specific definition in planning terms (see NPPF, Annex 2, here).
It (generally) means 80% of the full market price.
Interestingly, in the US, "affordable housing" generally means housing costing no more than 30% of a family's income.
Blue Witch | 17.06.19 - 9:54 a.m. | #
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Mark - your statement simply isn't true. In 2000 there were 47 fire related deaths in London. In 2017 (the last published figure) there were 103. In 11 of the 17 years since 2000 there have been a higher number of fire related deaths than 47.
dg writes: The data is here.
Johnny Topaz | 17.06.19 - 10:05 a.m. | #
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Cutting inner London fire stations also decreased response times to adverse events on the Underground and main line rail termini. So far that hasn't been challenged, but past performance is no guide to the future.
No-one looked at the 'bigger picture' and (BoJo and others) ignored independent risk analysis which showed the dangers from closing these stations couldn't be set aside. The Vauxhall helicopter crash was contained by having a nearby fire station putting fighters an kit on the scene - that station subsequently closed.
Grenfell Tower MIGHT (my speculation) have been better contained and possibly more lives saved if more machines and fighters could have been called upon - my apologies if this is offensive, it isn't meant to be.
Too many politicians can't see that money isn't everything.
Joel | 17.06.19 - 10:09 a.m. | #
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Joel, I think you mean the cuts increased response times - the fire brigade took longer to get there.
timbo | 17.06.19 - 10:20 a.m. | #
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You'd at least expect publicly owned assets to be used to build 'public', ie social housing at 'genuinely affordable' rents, or less. But no, as the present system conspires to make that the least likely option. Yet plenty of government money was available to fund the building of academy schools on these sites to undermine the local education authorities.
ActonMan | 17.06.19 - 10:38 a.m. | #
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...well at least we got a couple of water-cannon trucks ...they could be used in the event of civil-disorder, riots breaking-out in the not so distant future. if not to dampen-down the uprising then to at least tackle the (unattended) fires that are very likely to break-out.
E | 17.06.19 - 10:40 a.m. | #
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Belsize: I read the other day that the company that built the luxury flats is owned by a Tory party donor.
Nuff said. The man is a disgrace - and sadly he's not alone.
Cornish Cockney | 17.06.19 - 10:45 a.m. | #
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Excluding 2017's exceptional number, which is due to the Grenfell tragedy, average fire deaths/year since 2000 = 54. None of the years since the sell-of - 2017 excluded - equal or exceed that. Five of the ten facilities are now in use for education/affordable housing/hostel use. I am far from a fan of B Johnson, but there is no story here.
David | 17.06.19 - 11:05 a.m. | #
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I love the way shills for various causes descend on obscure blogs and message boards to push the message for their masters whenever a contentious, political issue is being discussed.
I wouldn't mind but two of the three posters who have appeared here have used almost the same lines: 'no story here' and 'nothing to see here' as if they're both reading from the same script.
dg writes: Mark and David are regular commenters, writing independently.
milliem | 17.06.19 - 11:48 a.m. | #
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My natural inclination would be to resist the closure of fire stations - and frankly I think Boris is a disaster waiting to happen; James Cleverly seems to have had a role in this too as Chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority - but I wonder how the closures are working out in practice. The closures were around 10% of fire stations in inner London. I question whether the service is 10% worse now, or largely unaffected, and whether response times have gone up materially.
DG has linked to the fire death statistics above. Deaths are an important measure of effectiveness, of course, albeit not the only important metric. But it does not help anyone to cherry pick the numbers.
The 47 deaths in 2000 seems an unusually low baseline, as it was 81, 78, 86, 52 in the next four years. We do not know the figures in 1999 or 1998. And the unusually high 103 in 2017 includes 72 in one incident, when otherwise it would be a relatively low 31, and in the previous four years, it was 46, 32, 29, 49.
The mean in the 18 years from 2000 to 2017 was 57, but no year since 2012 was above 50 until 2017. If you do a three year moving average to smooth out annual fluctuations, you'll find a strong downward trend from 82 in 2001-2003 to 36 in 2014-2016.
The official numbers for 2018 must be due to be published soon: the numbers for 2017 were released in May 2018.
Andrew | 17.06.19 - 11:59 a.m. | #
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Closing fire stations has many implications, and we should'nt be measuring this purely in terms of statistics for the numbers dying each year.
I remember reading (but could not find the link just now) that the closure of fire staions would affect the ability of the fire brigade to respond to putting out fires are important sites - such as the British Museum, and the Family History records centre in Clerkenwell. Thus, the role of the Fire Brigade is not just to save lifes, but in these cases, to save important public properties such as the above, and what they contain.
Its a fact that quicker response times by the Fire Brigade, Police and Ambulance service save lifes. Closing them increase repsonse times, and put simply, increases the risk that people will die. A building is on fire: the 5-10 min added difference means a family burnt alive or not. Ditto, waiting for an ambulance for 10 minutes or 30 minutes after a heart attack or road accident. The Fire Brigade union warned about this. So have the Ambulance unions.
Finally it goes without saying that many of us consider that the last thing the Tories are interested is improving public services. They cut them, and sell off the assets, claiming they are doing otherwise.
Once the centre of our towns had libaries, fire stations, court houses, ambulance stations, police stations, tax offices, dole offices . . . lots have been sold off. Going by the research the DG has done, the majority of them have *probably* become luxury private housing.
Follow the money: It is claimed that some of these sold off properties end up in the hands of people who have donated money to the Tory Party. See allegations here.
And then there is Boris Johnson telling a member of the London Assembly to "get stuffed" when he questioned him of this. That was beneath contempt and that alone makes him unfit to hold any public office in my opinion, let alone by PM.
Le Ver | 17.06.19 - 12:29 p.m. | #
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@Johnny Topaz - selective usage of stats from you.
Look at the recent number of deaths in the last five or six years. The Grenfell tragedy is an outlier but what we unmistakably have is fewer deaths as a trend compared to the early part of the the millennium.
@milliem
Be careful before you label people my friend. DG encourages discussion from all quarters on his excellent blog so be a little more temperate.
Mark | 17.06.19 - 12:41 p.m. | #
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#Le Ver "Get stuffed" may have been a perfectly reasonable response to a jumped up LA member, who often behave with airs of grandeur above their station. Parliamentary inquiries feature MPs behaving in a similar manner.
More important, it is now the middle of June. How can it be possible for LFB to not be able to state number of fire deaths as early as 01 January?
Scrumpy | 17.06.19 - 9:27 p.m. | #
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They are waiting for coroners reports to determine whether the death was caused by fire or natural causes/something else
Andy V | 19.06.19 - 7:13 a.m. | #
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Apols, no-one's perfect. That was one of my off days. The loss of fire stations ranks high on BoJo's many insensitive acts, with all of us Londoners at higher risk as a result.
Risk assessment is a matrix of likelihood against outcome - low chance of a major disaster but the destruction can be devastating.
I'll try to proof my comments better!
Joel | 20.06.19 - 1:21 p.m. | #
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