Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if his Department will instruct local authorities to retrofit sprinklers in high-rise blocks and provide funding for that work.

The Department wrote to all social housing providers in 2013 following the recommendations in a Coroner’s report into firefighter deaths which occurred at Shirley Towers in Southampton in April 2010. That letter encouraged providers to consider the retrofitting of sprinklers in older residential tower blocks. The Department then reinforced the content of that letter in it’s response to the Coroner’s report into the Lakanal House Fire – a copy of which can be found at

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/205567/Annex_B_-_SoS_DCLG_Rule_43_response.pdf

Where works are necessary to ensure the fire safety of a building, we will ensure that lack of financial resources will not prevent them going ahead.