Fire safety bill rises by £2.4m for 960 doors

At a Guildford Borough Council meeting on Wednesday, councillors approved an extra £2.4m to be spent on its fire door replacement programme

A Surrey council has approved an additional £2.4m to complete the fire door replacement programme for its housing stock.

This comes as Guildford Borough Council revealed £4.1m has already been spent on the scheme – far above the original £2.5m contract estimate, although the council had budgeted £3.6m.

More than 960 fire doors still need replacing across the borough's housing stock, according to council documents seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

Liberal Democrat Julia McShane, leader of the council, pledged she "will not rest" until residents have the best possible service after "decades of failure".

The council approved the additional £2.4m on Wednesday at a meeting, which brings the total to £6.5m.

Ms McShane said the scheme had been "hampered by years of neglect and poor record keeping under the previous Conservative council leadership".

"The depth of their neglect of the housing service is such that it will take more time to find everything that needs to be put right," she added.

Fierce debate ensued as Conservative councillor Bob Hughes, representing Tillingbourne, said: "It is an extraordinary thing when the executive member, who presumably signed this off because it was under her watch, blames the Conservatives."

The council added the additional money needed to finish the project was based on £0.8m already committed to orders being placed and manufactured, with £1.6m needed to replace all outstanding fire doors.

The LDRS previously reported the council had overspent by £1.6m on the fire safety project.

This was based on assumptions from incomplete data left officers underestimating how many doors needed replacing in the council's housing stock, according to a report.