A tower block fire exposes Birmingham’s council housing problem

‘You just think of Grenfell. The first thing you think is you’re not going to get out of here alive’

By Kate Knowles

Last Saturday evening, Jenny* heard a loud banging noise coming from outside of the flat she shares with her partner. Taking a quick look through the spyhole of the front door, she saw that it was pitch black in the corridor outside — very unusual. Curious, she pulled the handle and unwittingly admitted a “plume of thick black smoke” into the property. Terrified, she slammed the door shut and called 999. “It was horrendous,” she says. “You just think of Grenfell. The first thing you think is you’re not going to get out of here alive.”

Jenny* lives in Durham Tower in Ladywood, which has 80 homes across its 19 floors. Some of the flats are privately owned, but most are let by Birmingham City Council. Built in 1970, Durham Tower these days shows signs of ageing and neglect. When I visit, there’s broken glass in the stairwell and the vestibule smells faintly of urine. The ceiling of the tenth-floor corridor where the fire broke out is charred black. Chemical separation in the paint trails down the peeling wallpaper and an acrid barbeque smell lingers. Durham Tower is one of many ailing council properties across the city — now it seems it is also unsafe.

Jenny, who is in her late fifties and her partner, who is in his early sixties, had to be given masks connected to oxygen cylinders and led down the stairs by West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) on Saturday. Outside, 35-year-old Hadeer Mohammed, a neighbour from another floor, had just returned from Tesco to find the building surrounded by emergency services. She called her husband who was inside their flat with their 11-year-old daughter, but he had no idea about the blaze — the smoke alarms inside their flat had not gone off due to the heavy fire doors, but neither had alarms or sprinklers been set off in the communal areas, according to residents. When the pair made their way outside to join Hadeer, her terrified daughter had a panic attack and started vomiting.

Acorn Birmingham member defence organiser Milo Price with a Durham Tower resident. Photo by Kate Knowles/The Dispatch.

The fire was started in a suitcase on the communal landing of the tenth floor — WMFS believes it was started deliberately and are investigating the alleged arson. No one knows for sure who is responsible, but there are plenty of rumours swirling about. Some Durham residents think it was misbehaving kids, others blame it on the homeless people who sometimes get inside the block and sleep in the bin chute rooms that sit on each floor. The only thing everyone can agree on is that the tower has such poor security measures in place that determining what happened and preventing it from happening again seems futile. There is no CCTV in the block — some residents claim there used to be cameras, but these were removed in 2020, although Birmingham City Council would not confirm or deny if this is true.

For the residents of Durham Tower, the fire didn’t come as a surprise. They’re desperate for a wide range of improvements to be made to the block. They want CCTV installed, the ancient pipes upgraded, and damp, mould and damage from the building’s regular leaks to be cleared up. Bizarrely, given their failure to activate during Saturday’s fire, some of these leaks have been caused by sprinklers going off when they shouldn’t have, such as when someone in one of the few privately owned flats used a steamer to remove wallpaper.

In an effort to get the council to take notice, about a quarter of people living in the block have joined the community union Acorn, which helps tenants organise to take action and win improvements and/or compensation from their landlords. Acorn Birmingham’s member defence organiser Milo Price says the conditions at Durham are “catastrophic”.

The tower is a totem for Birmingham City Council’s chronic council housing issues. The authority, which is landlord to about 60,000 tenants, called a housing emergency at the start of 2023. At that time, there were more than 4,000 families stuck in temporary accommodation, and the Housing Ombudsman was investigating how the local authority addressed leaks, damp and mould, and its approach to handling complaints. New figures suggest the overall quality of housing is declining. At the start of 2024, 36.9 percent of council homes met the Decent Homes Standard, a legal standard that sets minimum requirements for the condition of social and private rented housing in England and Northern Ireland. According to a council report released this week, today only 26.65 percent do.

The tenth floor of Durham Tower after the blaze. Photo by Kate Knowles/The Dispatch.

“Birmingham Labour’s housing record has gone from bad to diabolical,” Ewan Mackey, deputy leader of the Birmingham Conservatives recently said in a statement. “Nearly 75 percent of Birmingham’s social housing is now unfit for purpose, with conditions that endanger the health and dignity of residents.”

The council has also recently refurbished all bathrooms and kitchens in Durham Tower in their aim to improve the Decent Homes Standard by eight percent each year until 2031, with £1.5bn investment overall. The changes have been met with confusion by Durham tenants, most of whom weren’t experiencing issues with either of these parts of their homes — that is, until after the work was completed. Now, residents report, the water pressure in their new kitchen taps is so low they effectively can’t get hot water. New kitchen appliances are leaking and one flat’s leaky new bathtub has caused grief for every flat directly beneath them.

Strangely, Durham Tower sits within a regeneration zone in Ladywood that has faced huge controversy after it was revealed that the scheme could lead to the razing of 6,000 properties in the area. But while hundreds of Ladywood residents have mobilised to protest the plans, fearing displacement from an area that some have lived in for decades, Durham Tower’s residents are actually calling for their tower to be pulled down as soon as possible. They want it to be replaced with homes that are comfortable and safe to live in. While some properties less than 30 years old will be bulldozed, none of the seven tower blocks that are also within the scheme’s boundaries will. Instead, these blocks will be refurbished at different points in the 20-year-long, four-phase scheme. According to the plans, Durham won’t be refurbished until phase three.

The biggest concern for residents, more than leaking taps or peeling wallpaper, is safety. There is no onsite concierge and strangers can seemingly gain access to inside the building quite easily. Hadeer says that in 2020, she was confronted by two intruders who followed her into the lift, then pulled a knife on her outside her front door. She handed over her bag to them but when she spoke to the police, she claims, she was told there was little chance of them being able to catch the perpetrators because of the lack of CCTV footage. Many tenants believe that with CCTV in place as a deterrent, last Saturday's fire would never have happened. If it had, they say, at least the police would have a better chance of finding out who started it.

Durham Tower. Photo by Kate Knowles/The Dispatch.

Thankfully, the fire was extinguished and nobody came to any lasting harm (it’s worth noting that one area Birmingham City Council is performing well in is the percentage of fire risk assessments carried out in high rise blocks — 99.51 percent). Fifty people were evacuated from the building and taken to the nearby Utilita Arena to escape the gale of Storm Darragh. Two hours later, they were let back into their homes. But the question in many people’s minds now is whether the same thing will happen again, and whether or not they will be so lucky. Looming over Durham Tower, as in many such blocks across the country, is the shadow of Grenfell. While the 2017 fire was caused by a different set of circumstances to those that plague Durham, the lack of trust that residents have in the authorities’ ability to protect them lingers on.

Ruth, a mother in her 30s who lives on the third floor, says she only accepted the flat because it was so low down the building. “Anything higher and I wouldn’t have taken it,” she says. “This way, if there is a fire, I can get my son and we can jump out of the window and be safe.”

A spokesperson for Birmingham City Council said: “Members of our maintenance team have met with some residents of Durham Tower and the Acorn Union following complaints raised. Further meetings with residents are planned to resolve any concerns and provide support as needed. Repairs and maintenance on Durham Tower and all council properties in Ladywood will continue as normal regardless of the status of the regeneration.”

*Name has been changed at the request of the resident.