00:00Gabe Santa was just 15 when he died after falling from the roof of a car park on Hanover Street
00:06in 2020.
00:07His father, Johnny, has since led a campaign for stronger protections at car parks across the country.
00:14It's ludicrous when you consider that you can't even go into a fifth or sixth floor in a hotel and
00:21open the window fully.
00:22There's a window lock on, you know, so these particular structures, multi-storey car parks,
00:28are perhaps the only buildings where people can just walk in, no questions asked, anyone at any time of night
00:34or day,
00:35and then be exposed to an unacceptable risk.
00:39And so after Gabe's preventable death in 2020, that's when I started looking into this a bit more.
00:45And then, yeah, you just discover what's been happening for such a long time.
00:49And the absolute need now for primary legislation to change the law, to keep our most vulnerable members of the
00:58community safe.
00:59The proposed Gabe's law would increase the minimum height of barriers from 1.1 metres to 2.7 metres,
01:05including at existing sites, and require round-the-clock on-site staffing.
01:10What's the guarantee that just by amending building regulations, things are going to change?
01:15We don't believe that that's going to be good enough.
01:20And secondly, amending big building regulations will only mean that new multi-storey car parks that are built
01:28will conform to the new standards that we're asking for.
01:32The bill has yet to secure a second reading in the Commons after objections prevented progress on two scheduled occasions.
01:38The government at the moment is objecting, and it's objecting primarily because it doesn't believe that primary legislation is called
01:48for.
01:48It believes that we'll be able to amend building regulations.
01:53And additionally, there's already statutory regulation that mean that this type of thing shouldn't happen.
02:00Well, our lived experience and the lived experience of many other families, unfortunately,
02:04who've had preventable deaths and have had family members that maybe have survived but with life-changing injuries,
02:10is that what the government's saying might be theoretically correct, but in practice, this does not happen.
02:17We are going down to see the new Housing and Building Safety Minister, Baroness Blake,
02:23and the new Communities Minister, Florence Eshalomi, in the coming weeks,
02:29again to argue our point about the fact that actually this time we think the government's got it wrong.
02:34Johnny's just launched 720 Degrees CIC, a future cultural hub and portal to well-being anchored by a skate park.
02:43We want to engage with people all over the city.
02:46If you've got an idea for a project, you know, whatever it is, come and have a chat with us
02:51potentially,
02:52because we want to encourage this feeling of community.
