If you are lucky enough to consider buying a newly built, luxury riverside apartment, you would expect it to have been designed, built and approved with adequate fire protection, wouldn't you? Well, after reading about the the trials and tribulations of occupants at Pacific Wharf in London's Rotherhithe, you may think twice. According to a London Evening Standard article, they have discovered that their sleekly designed apartment block has a serious absence of fire compartmentation between floors, and horizontally between individual apartments. The building is also said to suffer from a lack of fire stopping, including the absence of such measures in shafts rising from the basement car park through all six floors. Things had got to such a stage that the National House Building Council (NHBC) is now funding a substantial remedial programme, which has required the temporary rehousing of many of the residents while it is being carried out.
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