24/7 ‘waking watch’ in operation due to ‘substantial’ fire risk at sheltered housing site in Cambridge
A 24/7 ‘waking watch’ is in operation due to concerns over the ‘substantial risk’ a fire would present to residents of a sheltered housing site in Cambridge.
The city council plans to move everyone living at Stanton House to other sheltered accommodation in the city for safety reasons, while it considers redevelopment of the site in Christchurch Street.
In the meantime, with the safety of residents described as “paramount”, it is spending £2,025 a week to ensure someone is available around the clock to assist with an evacuation in the event of a fire.
Council officers told a housing scrutiny committee on June 18 that the authority had originally planned to link the redevelopment of Stanton House to a new build project on East Road, to which the residents could have moved.
But it now has to act after a fire risk assessment found there was a “substantial” risk to the people and the building if a blaze broke out.
In office hours, the council’s independent living team is tasked with looking after safety, while a security firm is being employed to provide the waking watch out of hours.
Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service issued a Notice of Deficiency (NOD) on the building in December, detailing 11 problems. Many of these were minor and have been rectified, but the significant fault is the lack of compartmentation in the building to reduce the risk of fire spreading.
The 1960s building has 32 one-bedroom flats and one two-bedroom, two-storey house beside it. More than half the tenants have lived on site for under five year, but 16 per cent have lived there for more than 10.
It would cost an estimated £635,000 to complete the required works at Stanton House. But officers said that was not an investment the city council would want to put into a building that “does not have a longer-term future”.
The council has put aside £333,000 to cover the ‘decanting’ payments it will make to people for the loss and disturbance as they are moved out of the building.
Work on future options for redeveloping Stanton House will continue, with a report expected in September.
Cllr Anthony Martinelli (Lib Dem, Market) welcomed the work to ensure residents’ safety and said his preference was for social housing to be included in the redevelopment options.
Harmony Birch, a tenant representative, had concerns about housing for the elderly being lost, and said the council should replace Stanton House with new homes for older people.
An officer said there was other sheltered housing in the city to which the residents could move, and said the council needed to look at understanding what types of housing older people wanted in the city.
She noted that not all of its existing sheltered housing was meeting the needs of older people in Cambridge.
However, she said there was not currently the resource available to undertake such a project, so the council would need to consider how it could finance the work.