Fire Doors - Please keep them closed

For the safety of everyone in Ben Jonson House, please keep fire doors closed.  Let the BEO know if any fire doors are not closing properly.

In particular, please don't jam fire doors open.  This case where someone kept the fire door open with a fire extinguisher is really adding insult to (potential) injury:

Please don't do this

Concrete Testing

The concrete fabric of Ben Jonson House has been tested over the last few weeks.  The testing is done by abseilers using their eyes, looking for loose and rusty bits, and using masonry hammers to tap suspicious spots to see if they sound hollow or flakey.

One of the testers I spoke to said that our concrete was in very good condition given its age.

Today was the most obvious part of the testing (unless you saw a man dangling in front of your window, as I just did) when Golden Lane was partially closed to allow the testers to work above the road.

No safety nets

A spate of lift problems

It seems the lifts have been having a spate of technical issues of late.  On a number of occasions two of the four lifts have been out of action.  We'll ask the BEO if this there are any systemic problems we should be aware of.

None shall pass

2016-02-22:  I received a response ... scheduled lift maintenance coincided with some lift failures meaning that more lifts were out of action than would normally have been expected.  So it's just one of those things.  A one off.  But we have this record here, just in case.

Noisy Emergency Works

You may well have heard construction noise this evening. This is due to some kind of emergency works happening on Bridgewater Street, or so says the Environmental Services help desk (020 7606 3030).  I was told (at about 22:30) that I was the 60th caller and that the duty environmental services officer would be attending.

There is no information about what the emergency is or how long the noise will be going on.

The scene looks like this:

An Emergency

Drain Cleaning Policy & Schedule

The Repairs and Maintenance people at the BEO have let us know the schedule for the maintenance of the surface water drains around Ben Jonson House:
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All Podium drains are cleaned annually and any blockages are dealt with as soon as they are reported.

The podium drains as are other drain pipes both cleared and inspected by camera.

Even though we are vigilant a drain can block at any time due to matters out of our control e.g. Debris which can be a carrier bag, newspaper etc. Or a build-up of debris between the annual drain clearance programme.

Ben Jonson podium drains are due to be cleaned/cleared in the next couple of weeks. (March) I walked the site today with the Contractor showing the areas you sent to me via the blog. Thank you. We also checked the whole area with a map/estate plan so there was no room for error. Once finished I shall send you a copy of the spread-sheet for your records.

CoL Planners comment on Bernard Morgan House project

The chair of Breton House wrote to the City planning department about how previous planning restrictions and guidelines (such as this and this) might affect the Bernard Morgan House proposals.

Here is the response from the Principle Planning Officer:

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Thank you for your email and your useful comments.

Whist no application has been submitted we are at an early stage of discussions with the developer with regards to this scheme. We were not aware that Taylor Wimpey were going to undertake a public consultation exercise, in my view the scheme is not yet sufficiently developed for this to have been undertaken. To be acceptable I need to be satisfied that the proposed scheme would satisfy the relevant policies of the City of London Local Plan and I can confirm that the Golden Lane Estate Listed Building Management Guidelines are a material consideration in this matter. For your information we have a meeting with residents from the Golden Lane Estate on Wednesday (17th) at 10.00.

Kind Regards

Principal Planning Officer
Department of the Built Environment
City of London

8 am cinema fire alarm tests 16th Feb

Thanks to the chair of the Breton house group for spotting this:
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Subject: BARBICAN CENTRE - Notice of Fire Alarm Testing

Due to the recent installation of a new fire protection system, we will shortly be carrying out further intensive tests (in addition to our routine early morning tests).

The tests will commence at 08:00am and be finished by 10:00am

Alarms will be activated and allowed to run for 5 minutes, and a second test will then be carried out in the same area.

There will be up to 8 tests per day, each test will take 7 – 8 minutes

The tests are scheduled to take place on the following dates:

• Exhibition Hall 1 & Cinema 2 /3 16th Feb

Cripplegate Ward Mote 2016 Invitation

We have had the 11th March date for the 2016 Cripplegate Ward Mote in the house group diary for some months now, but now we have the official invitation:

Click image to read the whole letter.

Eyebolt testing 2016

There are eyebolts screwed into the concrete, high on Ben Jonson House, which are used by abseilers to get to those hard-to-reach parts of the building.  The window cleaners use these eyebolts.

The eyebolts need to be tested every year.  This year the eyebolts will be tested on the 17th, 18th and 19th of Feb (weather permitting).

I know this because a notice was put into the lift 64 (Waitrose end) notice board:

+spelling correction.  Click to expand.

Cycle Racks & Fire Safety update

The house group wrote to the Town Clark to see if he could break the 3 way departmental log-jam which was preventing the fire safety issue with the cycle racks being resolved.

Well, there has been some good progress.  A message from the office of the Town Clerk:

Further your email, Mr Barradell followed this up with the various officers involved and I can confirm that the Barbican Centre are arranging to remove the cycle racks in question. Mr Barradell has asked for confirmation of a scheduled date for completion of these works and I will come back to you with this once it has been confirmed to me.

I'll put an update on the blog when I hear the dates or spot that the bike racks have gone.

Window Cleaning Schedule for 2016

From the BEO:
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Click image to read the full schedule

Peeping Alarm - Another update

The latest on the substation alarm which was sounding for several days over Christmas, and which was noted in the following posts here:

• the-peeping-alarm-story
• substation-alarm-before-christmas

We have another update from the City officer investigating:

We have not completed work on this just yet. We are having to down load data from the alarm panels and cross reference the panel logs with real time reports from those on the ground on the day, it has not been that straightforward . I will be able to giving a brief update to the Residents Association on Wednesday night.

I have asked which Residents Association and which Wednesday night are being referred to.

How the House Group Committee Works

The house group committee is formed of people elected at the preceding AGM or appointed during the year.

Once formed the committee meets every other month on a Wednesday at 19:30 in the evening for a couple of hours.  Our house officer, Sheila Delaney, attends these meetings (and the AGMs) which is very kind of her as it extends her working day by quite a bit and eats into her home life.

The meeting is guided by our Rolling Agenda and Minutes document.  It's not terribly formal, but it does help us to remember the things we need to keep an eye on.

Mostly the 'work' of the committee is attending the meetings, helping to get through the bottle of wine we traditionally have (which we pay for!), and also sending emails and attending occasional meetings with City officers.

If you would like to join the committee please just send us a note using the form below.  New committee members can join by standing for election at the AGM or by appointment during the year if there is room (which there is!).

Any resident is very welcome to attend the committee meetings to listen.  Bring your own wine.

Welcome Suggestions

We received a list of suggestions from a resident via the blog contact form (the one at the bottom of the page you're reading now). We thought it would be good to post them and answer them here, so here we go:

Suggestions in black, answers in blue:

1. Would it be possible to add the window cleaning and abseiling dates to the blog events calendar?

Yes, but like so many things it's a matter of time.  The (volunteer) committee members tackle what they can with the time they have available and in the order which seems to makes most sense at the time.  In this case we have suggested to the (paid) BEO that they might run their own blog along the lines of this one, and in so doing avoid duplication and improve the delivery of information, not least the window cleaning times.  I'll send a message off to Sheila to see if I can get the latest cleaning times forecast and I'll add those to the calendar (if I have time!)

2. The document holders in the lifts are a great idea for urgent and important communication that we all need to know about. But most of the time they are empty. Perhaps it would be a chance to promote the existence/work of the House Group and Blog if there was a poster in the holder at all other times? An important notice could then be inserted in front of the poster whenever necessary.
Absolutely, yes, but, well, see #1 above. Also we have asked for volunteers to help with this and some other things (see this blog post), but so far nobody has claimed the Lift Notice Board Monitor role.  It remains open if anyone would like it.  In the meantime I put notices in when I think there is something particularly worthy of note.

3. Could the same holder be used to promote each House Group meeting for the fortnight before they take place so everyone understands they are welcome to attend and encouraged to do so. (if thats right?)

Again, yes indeed, and I do try to give good notice for meetings.  For some things, like the AGM we have to give 4 weeks notice, which is why some of the notices hang around for a while.

4. At the AGM some christmas gifts were given to the car park attendants and the cleaners.  As the House officer was present at the meeting I didn't raise it, but should they also be included in our thank you in future?

We really do appreciate Sheila's time.  This matter is in hand :-)

5. Before the official AGM bit the list of issues that the House Group was concerned about and working on was shared.  Is there a way of publishing and updating the whole list for all members of the house group more frequently than at the AGM?  I say this because during lift smalltalk it is clear to me that many people in BJH are unaware of the good work you all do on their behalf.  I also wonder if it would be the way to spark more support if the list highlighted issues where you would also welcome more one off help from people who really care about a certain issue but wouldn't want to be full-time committee members?

The committee discussed this today and I'll put something on the blog about the issues list this evening; we maintain a document which is what I call a rolling agenda and minutes so I'll share that.  We're certainly always open to residents using the might of the house group to help with worthy causes.  We're also open to people joining the committee at any time.  Just drop us a note on the form below.

Lake Imogen

It seems we still have problems with drainage around Ben Jonson House.  The house group committee do keep asking the BEO how they plain to maintain the drains, but we still have not received a plan.

This photo was taken at about 22:30 in the early stages of storm Imogen.  This lake is underneath Ben Jonson House with the lights of staircase 63 reflected in the water.  No rain is falling directly upon this lake, it is being fed by streams of water from the wider podium area which shows that the gully drains are blocked too:

It can only get bigger

Cycle Racks & Fire Safety

As noted last April, the bike racks at the northern side of the spiral ramp to Whitecross St present a hazard in the event of an evacuation of Ben Jonson House, for example in the event of a fire.  The problem is that anyone in a wheelchair or with a pram would not be able to pass freely and so would block the escape route for everyone behind them.

The house group committee has been chasing this with various parts of the City but to no effect.  The BEO say it's not their issue and that they have raised it with the Arts Centre (who paid to have the racks installed), we are told that the Arts Centre thought the BEO would do the work and the City Surveyors department say there is no money.  From our point of view it seems that each of these parts of the City just bounce the matter to the next.

The City Surveyors have pointed out that the racks went through the full planning process before being installed and that anyone could have raise the fire safety issue during that process.  This may be true, and it is unfortunate that nobody, not even the City Surveyors realised there was a fire safety risk with the racks, but now we do know there is a fire safety problem it needs to be fixed.

The fix could take the form of a ramp a meter or so to the west of the racks allowing people on wheels to get down from the pavement to the vehicle exit lane to the service yard or the removal of the racks, but something needs to happen.

To try and break the logjam between the various parts of the City we will contact the Town Clerk.  He is the only common boss for the three City entities involved in this matter.

It may look like there is enough room for prams and wheelchairs in the following photo, but it looks very different when many bikes are locked to the racks.

When bikes use these racks no wheelchair or pram can get past.

The Physical Future Of The Barbican Estate (1990)

Here is another document from the paper archive:  "The Physical Future Of The Barbican Estate".

The 51 page document is not explicitly dated, but the introduction on page 3 says that it was recommended that the report be created in a Feb 1990 meeting of the BRC, so the document itself probably dates from a few months after that.

The document is really nicely written and covers areas which are the topic of much angst today, such as concrete, roofs and drainage.

Click on image to open the document

p.s. I have created an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) version of the document here.  Note that the 'original' document is a scan, so it's like a photograph of each page.  The OCR document is the result of some clever Google software which picks out text from the image of each page.  OCR is not perfect:  if you want to read the document then use the scan, but if you want to find if a word is used in the document the OCR version may help.

Bernard Morgan House Today: Photo Sphere

Here is a Google PhotoSphere view of Bernard Morgan House as it is today taken from the north western corner of Breton house on the highest balcony.  If you follow the link, then click on the image, you will be able to look all around by using a click-drag.  Give it a go.

Click this image to go to the photo sphere photo

Golden Lane Estate Listed Building Guidelines

I have been given a copy of the updated 2013 edition of the Golden Lane Estate Listed Building Management Guidelines, along with extracts which relate to the Bernard Morgan House project.

Immediately below are the extracts and below that is a link to the whole document.

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1.2.1.2 Holistic significance (p43)

The estate should be appreciated in its entirety: not only its various components – residential, community, recreational, commercial and the external spaces between buildings – but also its setting within the surrounding urban fabric. The views from and into the estate have become important, and part of its special architectural interest lies in its relationship to adjacent buildings. Any developments on the immediate boundaries of the listed area should take into account the significance of the estate’s setting. No new buildings, infilling, removals or extensions should be introduced which would be detrimental to the integrity of the estate as a whole.

2.2 Significance of the estate as a whole (p61)

The views from – as well as into – the estate have become important. Part of the special architectural interest of the estate lies in its relationship with adjacent buildings; their height, scale, mass, form, materials and detailing could, for example, have an impact on that special interest. An illustration of the importance of the current setting is the view along Goswell Road and Crescent House with the backdrop of the tower blocks of the Barbican Estate – all by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. The relevant local authority should, therefore, take into account the significance of the estate’s setting to its special architectural interest when considering any developments on the immediate boundaries of the listed area.

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Click for full document.

1962: Planning requirements for the section house

The building due to be demolished and replaced in the Taylor Wimpey project is called the police section house.  This building, and some of the planning restrictions placed upon it, was discussed in the July 1962 edition of Official Architecture and Planning.

Can we ask that the City apply the same conditions to the new building?

Part of the 1962 article.  Click to zoom.

NB: I don't have the full 1962 article, I only have this small segment.

Job Descriptions from 1988

In among a heap of old house group documents I found a letter from the Barbican Estate Office to a Ben Jonson House resident.  The letter is dated 13th October 1988.

Page one is a covering letter.  Pages two and three are job descriptions for Car Park Attendant and Estate Cleaner respectively.

The covering letter is interesting, not least because the BEO officer assures our resident that he has "... ordered a new hose and watering can."

Click on the image below to read the letter:

BJH is saved.  Click to read the letter.

21 Moorfields - Moor Ln. Closure

From the BEO:
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Dear Residents,

Please see the attached newsletter provided by the 21 Moorfields Development for the dates and timings of the Moor Lane Closure.

Access to 03 Willoughby House from Moor Lane will be closed off for up to 2 weeks from the 15th February. Therefore we will be opening the gate between Andrewes and Willoughby on the 03 level allowing residents to leave and enter via the Andrewes Car Park entrance on Fore Street.

Although the central section of Moor Lane will be closed access to the Willoughby Car Park Ramp to 01 & 02 will be accessible from the London Wall & Fore Street end & Speed 02 (Silk Street) will still be available throughout this period.

If required, it may be possible to move from the 03 level, on a temporary basis, to a spare space on the 01 or 02 levels during this time. Please speak to the Estate Concierge at 01 Willoughby and they will do their best to assist you.

Any questions regarding the works please use the contact details provided by 21 Moorfields on the newsletter attached.

Click on the image to read the "attached newsletter"