Sam Webb outside Lakanal House
I SUSPECT Sam Webb would have been glad that the campaign against single staircase high-rise buildings – the kind that are being proposed for the 02 Centre redevelopment – continued even at his funeral service last week.
A life-long campaigner for stricter building regulations, he had played an important role advocating for tenants and investigating failures at Ronan Point, Lakanal House, Grenfell and the Chalcots here in Camden.
Mr Webb lived in Parliament Hill for many years and worked as an architect for Camden Council before setting up Tower Blocks UK, which campaigned for stronger regulations in the building industry. He got an MBE in May for his work with the Grenfell Inquiry, shortly before his death.
At the funeral of the fire safety expert, his son-in-law Paul Kirkley remarked: “He could have had a lucrative career designing buildings for rich people. But he was more interested in fixing buildings, or getting rid of them. It was a running joke in the family that he must be the only architect that ended his career with fewer buildings than when he started.”
Recalling his testimony to the Grenfell Inquiry, he said: “To his credit, his submission was a lot more detailed than the four words he might have been tempted to use: ‘I told you so’.”
Despite London Fire Brigade concerns, the UK is one of the few countries in the world that permits single staircases in its housing tower blocks. It is why Landsec, the developer behind plans to build 1,850 homes in the 02 Centre off Finchley Road, is not breaking any regulations with its designs for its tall buildings.
It has recently re-submitted its application to the council with a series of tweaks to the designs that it says “put the proposals at the forefront of emerging fire safety standards”. But the single staircases plan – that Mr Webb had raised concerns to me about this time last year – remains.
“The dangers of a single escape staircase are obvious,” he had told me in October 2021, explaining about the difficulties in escaping a burning building.
Jane Duncan OBE was among the speakers at the funeral, recalling how Sam was “frankly a chairperson’s nightmare” due to his detailed technical knowledge. In the build up to the Grenfell disaster in 2017 “he had become frightened about the potential for huge fire and huge loss of life”, she said.
Tony Bird, a housing consultant, spoke about his most recent work in Hammersmith where a block of 66 homes was being knocked down and replaced by one with 133 flats – in a single-storey staircase scheme.
“It’s like Grenfell and Lakanal House fires never happened,” he told the funeral.
In a touching send-off, Sam’s daughters read from letters he had written to his grandchildren before the service ended with The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun.
• A consultation on the 02 Centre site has recently been relaunched following a series of amendments. Landsec, the developer, has been promoting its project to a younger generation with a series of sponsored Instagram stories. It contains a link, which pops up in Instagram-users’ timelines, to a template supportive message that can be sent to Camden’s head of planning with one click of a button!
Those with any different opinions can make objections through the planning website, reference 2022/0528/P.
