Journalist, Inside Housing and elsewhere. Author of Show Me The Bodies tinyurl.com/4y7cwb8j and Homesick tinyurl.com/2r8jp7z8

London
I was born into a city where housing was affordable. But I've grown up into one where it was not. What has gone wrong in London over the last 35 years? And where is it going in the future? My new book, Homesick, tells that story. Out Sept 25 amazon.co.uk/Homesick-How-Ho…
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What's going to happen when a generation of private renters start to retire with no housing security? This week's Substack (an extract from Homesick) asks a question that housing policy is frighteningly unwilling to contemplate: peteapps.substack.com/p/gene…
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Fresh from the printers. Always a nice moment. Get yours here: amazon.co.uk/dp/1836432275?r…
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Homesick - which follows the story of how London became so unaffordable over 40 years, and where it is going next - is out in paperback today! You can get a copy here: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/home…
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More detail about the building in Poplar where a man died in a fire at the weekend: - Building was fitted with combustible Hemsec insulated panels, which were non-compliant at the time of build (oddly described as 'inflammable' by the manufacturer) peteapps.substack.com/p/a-fi…
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Fire appears to have jumped one floor, and ignited the balcony decking on the flat above - but no suggestion that this contributed to the death. Investigations in that regard are ongoing and will take a while
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Overall - it will be a familiar story to anyone who lives in a similar building. Serious questions about the risk of how long it takes us to remediate; the control of interim safety measures and what is really being offered to residents with disabilities in these buildings
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Joining Isaac Rose of the great @gmtenantsunion for a (free) event in Manchester on the evening of October 13, where we'll be chatting about how both cities became unaffordable places of the last few decades and what we can do about it: eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-tale-of…
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Very upsetting news over the weekend - a man has died following a fire at a building in Poplar. Investigations underway (and will take weeks), but this was a building awaiting cladding remediation work
Residents 'did not hear alarms' during fatal tower fire ➡️ bbc.in/4xXWz0A
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But we do know that this was one of thousands of buildings around the UK where - for a huge range of reasons - known fire risks are allowed to remain unremediated year after year. Eventually there will be fires.
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Government website says a Building Assessment Certificate was refused by the Building Safety Regulator in November last year. This is not hugely unusual (refusal rates are high), but does show the BSR was not totally satisfied with the safety case produced by the managing agent
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