Grenfell Tower
(Picture: PA Wire)More than 1,000 residential tower blocks in London still have serious fire safety issues such as flammable cladding, five years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the fire at Grenfell, which killed 72 people. The building was wrapped in combustible cladding which meant that it was rapidly engulfed in flames.
London Fire Brigade’s latest figures reveal there are 1,100 residential buildings in the capital that require residents to evacuate in the event of a fire due to fire safety defects including but not limited to dangerous cladding.
Other fire safety issues can include combustible balconies, inadequate fire doors or missing fire breaks. The affected buildings require measures such as continual waking watch patrols or a common alarm system to alert all residents to any fire, with leaseholders often having to cover the cost.
Speaking ahead of the anniversary, Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “heartbroken and angry” at “the lack of action taken over the last five years”.
He added that the families of Grenfell victims want those responsible held to account and for lessons to be learned.
Mr Khan said: “Neither of those things have happened and I think it’s really important for the Government to realise that, but for the grace of God, there could be another fire — maybe in a tower block, maybe in a smaller building — where fire spreads and people lose their lives. On that occasion, the Government and the council can’t say they weren’t warned.”
The Mayor has called on the Government to accept all the recommendations made by the public inquiry into Grenfell, as well as to “accelerate progress” on approving grants for cladding remediation and other building safety support.
To date, just 83 grants have been paid out in London from the Government’s £30 million waking watch relief fund, intended to cover the cost of replacing the expensive patrols.
More than 486 high-rise buildings in the country were found to be covered in Grenfell-style ACM cladding.
The latest figures show that 58 of them still have the cladding and that remediation work is under way on 27. Work is yet to begin removing the ACM from the remaining 31 buildings.
Thousands more buildings are still covered in different types of flammable cladding. To date, 131 grants from the Government’s Building Safety Fund for the remediation of non-ACM cladding have been paid out in London, despite more than 1,829 registrations to the fund from both the private and social sectors.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, has described how the removal of dangerous cladding in the UK has been “painfully slow”.
The Government said: “So far 45 of our biggest housebuilders have signed our developer pledge and will contribute £5 billion to fix their unsafe buildings. We expect them to work swiftly so people feel safe in their homes.”
Nightly patrols after day at work and £15,000 out of pocket
A homeowner has told how people living in her building have still not managed to recoup costs from the cladding scandal and were forced to do their own fire patrols to save money.
Ritu Saha, a 47-year-old university administrator, bought the leasehold of her flat in a development in Bromley at the end of 2015.
In November 2017 the residents of her building were told that their block was covered in the same aluminium composite material cladding as Grenfell Tower.
They were told by the fire brigade that they would need to put in a waking watch, hiring external fire wardens to patrol their building. But after spending at least £650,000-£700,000 on fire wardens alone, she explained how residents took it upon themselves to patrol the building 24/7.
She said: “I worked full-time so I would come home at 6.30pm and from seven o’clock till midnight I would have to crawl the building myself. And I did this for months.”
The fire brigade told them to put in a new £120,000 fire alarm system, she said, which they finally had installed in June 2019 after fundraising.
But because they installed the alarm before fire alarms funding was announced they have been unable to claim the cost back. In total, Ms Saha calculates that she has lost out on “a minimum of £15,000”.
She called on the Government to use the money it will receive from developers involved in the cladding scandal to refund all of the costs.
Met police ‘absolutely focused’ on investigation
The Met on Monday said it was “absolutely focused” on the criminal investigation into the Grenfell fire.
Scotland Yard has 180 investigators working on the case examining whether charges including corporate manslaughter and fraud can be brought in connection with the blaze.
The roles of 36 companies which were involved in the refurbishment of the tower is being examined.
Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy said: “None of us can pretend to understand what it is like for those so deeply affected. They have my commitment that the Met remains absolutely focused on the criminal investigation.”
