‘We’ve been told nothing’, say families on Essex estate built using RAAC

Council housing tenants on an estate built using reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) say they've been given no information about the safety of their homes.

The 18-home Knights estate in Basildon, Essex, was the first example of Siporex (another name for RAAC) being used for housing in the UK and is still standing.

Built in 1962, it now contains a mix of social housing and privately owned homes. When we visited, openDemocracy was shown examples of cracks in concrete on external walls by one tenant. She said: “There’s a metal bit sticking out and a massive crack and you can see through to the outside from our house. If we’re inside you can actually see daylight.”

Lesley Harbinson, who has lived on the estate for 37 years, added: “I’m a bit worried. They’re interconnected the houses, so in effect we’ve got three next door neighbours. So if one goes, the houses joined to them would go. It’s a difficult situation. I won't be sleeping happily in my bed tonight.”

As revealed by openDemocracy yesterday, this is the first housing estate found to be built using RAAC since the schools scandal broke last week.

The council told openDemocracy yesterday all its affected tenants had been informed. It also said it carries out “regular stock condition surveys” of properties built using RAAC to “ensure residents remain safe”.

openDemocracy spoke to nine households, eight of whom were Basildon Council tenants. The other property was being used for temporary accommodation by the council.

All of the residents said they’d never been told of any potential safety issues regarding the use of RAAC in their homes.

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said the daughter of an elderly disabled tenant.

“I know about it in the schools but in these houses, no. We’ve had nothing from the council,” said another tenant.

Alesia Allen, 38, has lived on Knights for five years. She told openDemocracy: “What does that mean for us, then? They should have told us. What’s going to happen now?”

Harbinson, 73, added: “We’ve never been informed about anything.”

She added: “These are the prototype, and there was another estate built that was then knocked down because the tops slipped over the bottoms and we were told that was because of the structure of the buildings, they’d cut corners, which they hadn't on these ones.”

The much larger Laindon 1, 2 and 3 ‘Siporex estate’ was built nearby using the same material shortly after Knights, but was demolished in the 1990s after years of structural issues.

In 2018, following a ceiling collapse at a Gravesend primary school, the Department for Education and the Local Government Association wrote to local authorities telling them to check for all properties in their portfolio constructed using RAAC. Fears over the material, primarily used to construct public buildings between 1960 and 1980, have now sparked the closure of more than 100 schools.

A Basildon Council spokesperson said: “Basildon Council currently owns a very small number of properties which were built using Siporex, a variant of RAAC. We maintain a high standard of inspection and maintenance across all of the buildings under the council’s jurisdiction, and we complete regular stock condition surveys of those that include RAAC in their construction to ensure residents remain safe.”

Despite the known risks of RAAC degrading in buildings more than 30 years old, the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ (DLUHC) position is that building owners are responsible for ensuring buildings are safe – a contrast from the government’s policy on dangerous cladding, which saw it cough up £5.1bn to help remove the material from buildings over a certain height.

The Regulator for Social Housing yesterday wrote to all social housing providers saying it did not believe RAAC was “widespread” but “may be present in a small number of buildings” and that “ensuring the safety of tenants and residents should be the highest priority for every landlord”.

It said it expected providers to “have a good understanding” of whether their homes contained RAAC, telling them to “develop proportionate mitigation and remediation plans” and “ensure you communicate appropriately with tenants where this is an issue”.

Housing campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa told openDemocracy: “Although we are being told RAAC isn’t a widespread issue within housing, I think it’s too early to say that.

“So many social homes that were built between the 1960s and 1980s are still standing. If the homes people are going to sleep in at night are at risk of caving in because RAAC has been used in the past, the public need to know. You would’ve thought this issue of ‘building safety’ would’ve been a primary concern, especially after Grenfell.”

In a separate statement, Basildon Council spokesperson's called Siporex a “similar form of concrete [to RAAC], which does not rely on steel reinforcement”.

They added: “While Siporex is not the same type of material as RAAC we do want to ensure that it continues to be safe for our residents. We maintain a high standard of inspection and maintenance across all of the buildings under the council’s jurisdiction, and we will shortly be contacting residents to arrange additional inspections in all properties built using Siporex.”

The government's RAAC identification guidance, published after the schools concrete scandal broke, Siporex is described as a manufacturer of RAAC.

Update 11 September 2023: This piece has been amended to include a new statement from Basildon Council, which was sent after publication.