Swiss Cottage is an area of Hampstead in the London Borough of Camden, England. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and includes Swiss Cottage tube station. Swiss Cottage lies 3.25 miles (5.23 km) north-northwest of Charing Cross. The area was named after a public house in the centre of it, known as "Ye Olde Swiss Cottage".
Ronan Point was a 22-storey tower block in Canning Town in Newham, East London, that partially collapsed on 16 May 1968, only two months after it opened. A gas explosion blew out some load-bearing walls, causing the collapse of one entire corner of the building; four people died and 17 were injured. The nature of the failure led to a loss of public confidence in high-rise residential buildings, and major changes in British building regulations resulted.
The Berkeley Group Holdings plc is a British property developer and house-builder based in Cobham, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The Lakanal House fire occurred in a tower block on 3 July 2009 in Camberwell, London. Six people were killed, and at least twenty injured, when a high-rise fire, caused by a faulty television set, developed and spread through a number of flats in the twelve-storey building.
The New Providence Wharf is a residential development in the Blackwall district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, at the north end of the Blackwall Tunnel. It was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and is managed by Ballymore, a property development company.
Cladding is the application of one material over another to provide a skin or layer. In construction, cladding is used to provide a degree of thermal insulation and weather resistance, and to improve the appearance of buildings. Cladding can be made of any of a wide range of materials including wood, metal, brick, vinyl, and composite materials that can include aluminium, wood, blends of cement and recycled polystyrene, wheat/rice straw fibres. Rainscreen cladding is a form of weather cladding designed to protect against the elements, but also offers thermal insulation. The cladding does not itself need to be waterproof, merely a control element: it may serve only to direct water or wind safely away in order to control run-off and prevent its infiltration into the building structure. Cladding may also be a control element for noise, either entering or escaping. Cladding can become a fire risk by design or material.
On 14 June 2017, a high-rise fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST and burned for 60 hours. 70 people died at the scene, and 2 people died later in hospital, with more than 70 injured and 223 escaping. It was the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since the 1988 Piper Alpha oil-platform disaster and the worst UK residential fire since the Blitz of World War II.
Grenfell Tower is a derelict 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington in London, England. The tower was completed in 1974 as part of the first phase of the Lancaster West Estate. Most of the tower was destroyed in a severe fire on 14 June 2017.
Tower blocks are high-rise buildings for residential use. These blocks began to be built in Great Britain after the Second World War. The first residential tower block, "The Lawn", was constructed in Harlow, Essex, in 1951; it is now a Grade II listed building. In many cases, tower blocks were seen as a "quick-fix" to cure problems caused by the existence of crumbling and unsanitary 19th-century dwellings or to replace buildings destroyed by German aerial bombing. It was argued that towers surrounded by public open space could provide for the same population density as the terraced housing and small private gardens they replaced, offering larger rooms and improved views, whilst being cheaper to build.
The Harrow Court fire occurred in a tower block on 2 February 2005 in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. Three people were killed, two of them firefighters, when a fire developed and spread from the 14th floor. An investigation of the fire found that there was an Abnormal Rapid Fire Development, caused by a candle melting the surface of a television, which then spread rapidly up the outside of the building to subsequent floors.
Rydon is a British facilities management and property maintenance company which was founded in 1978. Its head office is in Dartford, Kent, and it has two maintenance offices in London. It had a turnover of around £51.9 million and employed an average of 423 people in the year to September 2022.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry is a British public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people and destroyed Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. It was ordered by Prime Minister Theresa May on the day following the fire.
The Ledbury Estate is a large estate of social housing, in Peckham in the London Borough of Southwark. The estate is just south of the Old Kent Road, part of the A2 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) from both Tower Bridge and the Elephant & Castle it is adjacent to land used by George Livesey for the South London Gasworks.
Fellows Road is a two-lane road in the London Borough of Camden, just north of Central London. It is on the Eton College estate, a series of roads and houses built to replace the area destroyed in World War II, on land owned by Eton College. The road was originally built in 1873 and finished between 1874 and 1894, and named after the college's fellows.
The Barking fire was a structure fire that occurred on 9 June 2019 at a newly built six storey block of flats named Samuel Garside House, located in De Pass Gardens, Barking, London, the United Kingdom.
On 14 June 2017, the Grenfell Tower fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, West London, at 00:54 BST; it caused 72 deaths, including those of two victims who later died in hospital. More than 70 others were injured and 223 people escaped. It was the deadliest structural fire in the United Kingdom since the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster and the worst UK residential fire since the Second World War.
The Ampthill Square Estate, also known as the Ampthill Estate, is a housing estate in the London Borough of Camden in London, England. The estate is located in the Somers Town district, on the south side of Harrington Square, east side of Hampstead Road, and west side of Eversholt Street.
The United Kingdom cladding crisis, also known as the cladding scandal, is an ongoing social crisis that followed the Grenfell Tower fire of 14 June 2017 and the Bolton Cube fire of 15 November 2019. The fires revealed that large numbers of buildings had been clad in dangerously combustible materials, comprising a combination of flammable cladding and/or flammable insulation.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry is a British public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people and destroyed Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. It was ordered by Prime Minister Theresa May on the day following the fire.
Criticism of the response to the Grenfell Tower fire primarily consisted of condemnation of issues with the emergency response and fire safety regulation practices in the UK at the time. Broader political criticism was also directed at British society, including condemnation of the response by governmental bodies and UK politicians, social divisions, deregulation issues, and poor transparency overall.
