My mum died in January 2022. In the weeks following her passing, myself, my sister and my dad were inundated with sympathy cards and messages of condolence. As news of her death spread, there were text messages, Facebook messages and phone calls.

A week after my mum’s funeral, I went to see my dad. He was still grief-stricken of course. But that grief was made worse by a complete lack of contacts from the friends and family that had been in contact before the funeral and that had been in attendance to pay their last respects.

“It’s like they’ve forgotten her already,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “They’ve all just moved on.”

I tried to tell him that people have busy lives; that they may be grieving privately; or that – like me – grief is just too painful and is, therefore something to avoid.

He was right though. Me and my sister both noticed it as well. The news of my mum’s passing brought long lost relatives and friends out of the woodwork; but they all vanished again when the initial fuss was over. Maybe they thought they had done enough.

108 days from now, it will be the 10th anniversary of the Didcot Disaster that claimed the lives of four demolition workers. 10 years. 3,544 days.

In all that time, I have sat here and written about and talked about that incident. But did I do enough? Did we?

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Maybe it’s just human nature. Maybe we’re hardwired to believe that someone, somewhere, knows what they’re doing.

We put our faith in people and institutions: governments; federations; regulators; police, not because they’ve earned it, but because that’s what we have always done. And because the alternative is too bloody depressing. Because the thought that no one’s actually steering the ship is just too terrifying to contemplate.

But every now and again, reality comes along to remind us that the people at the helm might not know their port from their starboard.

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There was a time, not all that long ago, when people were dying quietly. Not from accidents, or old age; but from the very system that was meant to save them.

Thousands of people were infected with hepatitis and HIV through contaminated blood transfusions. Many of them were children.
The government said it was safe. Doctors said it was fine. Everyone said the risks were tiny, manageable, acceptable.

They said that right up until the funerals started. By then, it was too late. The damage was done, drip by drip.


Disasters don’t always happen in explosions or collapses. Some of them unfold more slowly, more quietly.

And if you think that kind of thing couldn’t happen in demolition or construction, you’re kidding yourself.

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A home is meant to be a place of safety, permanence, and security. It is the foundation upon which lives are built, a constant in a changing world. For thousands of residents in hundreds of post-war tower blocks across England, however, this fundamental promise is being tested in the most profound way imaginable. These buildings, constructed quickly and cheaply using a method called the Large Panel System (LPS), are at the centre of a quiet but escalating crisis; a crisis that could mean a surge in demand and workload for the UK’s demolition industry.

Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the new Building Safety Act is now forcing a long-overdue reckoning with the inherent structural risks of these specific buildings. The law mandates that the owners of these high-rises produce a detailed ‘building safety case,’ forcing them to confront structural risks that, in some cases, have been ignored for over half a century. For the social landlords who own them and the communities who call them home, this has created a set of nearly impossible choices where the financially viable, structurally safe, environmentally sound, and humane options are all in direct conflict.

This is the story of England’s other housing crisis, hidden in plain sight within the concrete fabric of our towns and cities. Here are five surprising truths that reveal the staggering complexity of the problem.

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A friend of mine – a local builder – was working alone once. He took off his hard hat to wipe away the sweat from his brow just as a big piece of timber fell from the roof of the building and hit him square on the head. He came round minutes or possibly hours later, felt the blood in his hair, and went back to work.

Another bloke I know was on a building being stripped. He knelt down to pick up some tools and managed to gash his knee quite badly on a piece of broken tile. He was sent to A&E; but when he found it busy, he decided to self-medicate, sticking the flaps of skin back together with Super Glue. He then returned to work.

And on one demolition site, an occupational nurse I know found cases of undiagnosed heart disease, undiagnosed liver disease, undiagnosed hearing loss. Each of them got their diagnosis and went straight back to work.

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