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Clarion Housing manager told staff how to fake fire safety sign

Footage released by Sky News shows a manager from Clarion Housing telling an employee to fake a fire safety notice.

As first reported by Sky News, the recording shows the manager saying, “Don’t tell anyone I told you this”. She then tells him how to pretend he’d put up important fire safety notices.

She then instructed him to put it on a “plain bit of wall” and “take a picture”. We then hear her bragging about her management style. She said:

My team is always on point, we always meet our targets.

Sky News then revealed that:

The conversation took place in 2022. It was reported to Clarion’s HR team in September 2023. However, an investigation only began in September 2024 when the recording was sent to Clarion management.

The manager involved was only sacked this summer — almost two years after it was first raised with Clarion.

The notice was alerting residents with disabilities or other vulnerabilities to contact Clarion. This was so they could undertake a “person-centred fire risk assessment”. This is a key requirement under post-Grenfell fire safety regulations.

Corporate greed

Clarion Housing is supposedly a not-for-profit company which has 125,000 homes. However, Clare Miller, the CEO, earns £447,439 every year.

Its website states:

Clarion makes a difference. It is committed to providing quality affordable homes and creating thriving communities across the country. As a not-for-profit, all Clarion’s surplus is reinvested into new and existing homes, services and community support.

I guess that commitment doesn’t include preventing death-by-fire.

Maybe if they paid her less, they could afford real fire safety signs.

Lessons learnt from Grenfell

This comes eight years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which killed 72 people. The independent inquiry into the disaster found that the deaths were “all avoidable” and that the government had “badly failed” the victims. It also found that some of those who played a part in “sowing the seeds of disaster” had shown “incompetence, dishonesty, and greed”.

So, eight years on, you would think that lessons had been learnt on the importance of fire safety.

As the Canary previously reported,

the catastrophic event was not just an accident but the culmination of years of institutionalised neglect, racism, classism, and discrimination against the predominantly low-income, Black, brown, and disabled residents of the tower.

It seems that once again, the people in power are brushing over the safety of people in social housing.

Social media users were quick to point out that fake fire safety signs are not the only problem with Clarion.

From not having hot water or fire extinguishers to disrepair and asbestos — it is clear that Clarion’s ‘quality’ affordable homes are that only by name.

The UK’s housing sector is balls deep in accusations and complaints. And now, Starmer is cutting affordable housing targets and slashing regulations to limit how many properties can be built in close proximity to each other. This is in a bid to “increase density” – and sounds a lot like another disaster, waiting to happen. 

So-called not-for-profit Social Housing providers are paying bosses over £400k a year. Meanwhile, they leave tenants in mouldy, asbestos-filled properties. It’s clear the system is not broken; it’s working exactly as intended.

Until there’s real accountability and investment in homes that are truly affordable and safe to live in, nothing is going to change.

 

Feature image via Clarion Housing Group/YouTube 

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.