Footage from the fire which tore through a six-storey student accommodation in Bolton on Friday evening had eery similarities to the Grenfell tragedy two and a half years ago. Thankfully, on this occasion no one was killed, but two people were treated at the scene for injuries, and it took 200 firefighters more than nine hours to extinguish the blaze.

Officials have said the cladding on the side of the building is high-pressure laminate (HPL) material, not the same kind as used on Grenfell, but the effect – acting to spread the fire up the building – was comparable.

The building is owned and run by Urban Student Life using the trading name Valeo USL Limited. USL boasts on its website that “our guests are treated like clients, not lodgers.” “We pride ourselves,” they continue, “on the high quality of our accommodation.” But it has quickly come to light that fire safety was far from the top of the company’s concerns.

In 2016, the company was struck-off from the National Union of Students’ (NUS) national codes – a voluntary scheme for student housing providers which guarantees certain standards – for “malpractice.”

The NUS found that in one case in Leeds not only did USL force students to stay in a hotel for eleven weeks after they were due to move in to the building, they also delayed compensation payments and provided no fire safety guidance to students when they moved in.

After a visit from the local Fire Authority, the building was deemed not fit for use, forcing the students to leave again and find alternative accommodation.

Clearly, USL have cases to answer when it comes to fire safety – but this is not a story of a single bad apple. There is little reason to be surprised that the first major cladding fire scandal after Grenfell came in purpose-built student housing. 

Anyone that has taken a cursory glance at the neoliberal city will be aware of the plastic orgy that is student accommodation, a veritable feast for fire. If student housing looks like a wild west of construction – a lucrative but largely regulation free-zone where developers squeeze rents out of every square metre – that’s because it is.

Student accommodation has been at the sharp-edge of neoliberalism over the past 20 years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, universities began selling off student halls on campus property, providing a short-term income boost while drastically hiking up rent prices for students.

Purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) is now one of the most lucrative sections of the UK property market, with one study finding it to be worth over £45 billion. In October, it was reported that the sector had recorded its fastest growth rate over the past year, with rents rising by 6 per cent to £169 per week.

A recent NUS study found that, since 2006, the private sector has gone from providing 18 per cent of student bed spaces in the UK to 41 per cent. First years and international students are especially vulnerable to the lure of the prison-like rooms of student halls, a captive market as they arrive into a new city they don’t yet know their way around.

A favourable regulatory and tax environment is partly what makes PBSA developments so lucrative. Student accommodation is outside the housing regulatory use-class, which means developers do not have to stick to rules on things like room-size, windows and quality materials. It also means section 106 – which authorises developers to build affordable housing accommodation – does not apply.

PBSA developers also don’t have to pay any business rates. Unsurprisingly, such an attractive proposition has drawn the attention of offshore companies, with one company earning £2.2 million in rents in 2016 while paying just £10,000 in tax.

This is cowboy capitalism, and in such an environment the question is not why don’t they care about fire safety, but why would they? Profit margins, not safety certificates, drive investments. 

On the night of the Bolton fire, The Times published a puff piece with the chief executive of the biggest student housing provider, Richard Smith of Unite Students, who was boasting about his £1.4 billion takeover of housing rival Liberty Living. The deal was approved by the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) two weeks ago.

“The boss leading Unite to the top of the class among property companies,” The Times swooned. But, shortly after Grenfell, six Unite Students properties failed fire safety tests. One of those buildings, Sky Plaza, is the second tallest in Leeds. Unite Students issued a statement saying that, despite the failures, only “some minor adjustments” to the buildings were needed.

This sort of complacency is widespread throughout the UK property market, and is driven by government inaction and a desire to avoid the significant extra costs that come with replacing dodgy cladding. Of 433 buildings with the aluminium composite material (ACM) found on Grenfell, just a quarter have been fixed. The government has stepped in with a £200 million subsidy, but developers are demanding more.

It took until July this year for the government to realise the material identified on the Bolton fire building, HPL, was also unsafe and needed to be taken down, precipitating a new round of pressure from the property industry for government subsidy.

Firms like Unite Students wager that if they move first and a rival waits it out for more cash, they are at a competitive disadvantage. It’s a high stakes game, with other people’s lives.

Following the Bolton fire, Grenfell United have called for the declaration of a national emergency to address fire safety. As long as the Tories are in power, they shouldn’t hold their breath. Britain’s housing wild west is not a flaw in their economic planning, but its design.

A system intended to inflate the profits of a rentier class at the expense of ordinary people – or just “common sense,” as Jacob Rees-Mogg might say.