A social housing block in Trafford identified as having ‘potentially unsafe ’ ACM cladding nearly five YEARS ago is still waiting for it to be replaced.
The cladding, the same kind that was largely blamed for the spread of the fire in Grenfell tower in London which killed at least 72 people in 2017, was first identified on five towers in Old Trafford soon after the tragedy. Grafton Court, Princess Court, Clifford Court, Pickford Court and Empress Court, home to 455 residents, all had around 15pc of their exterior surfaces covered in the problem cladding.
Cladding replacement for four out of the five Trafford social housing tower blocks has now finally been completed, according to housing group Trafford Housing Trust, which manages the blocks. But one tower - Clifford Court - is still waiting for its cladding to be replaced.
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The delay comes after new panels ordered were ‘slightly the wrong colour’, and a resident of one of the other courts said the state of the other blocks still ’causes anxiety’. Graham Scott, Trafford Housing Trust’s executive director of development, updated the council at a scrutiny meeting this week.
He said: “I think it’s best we start out with an apology because it’s taken us a long time to get here. We recognise that.
“We’re not the only organisation in the country dealing with this issue though and there’s still a large number of tower blocks out there that, in the hundreds, that haven’t been re-mediated. So, we do believe that we’re getting to a positive position.”
Wilf Stevenson, resident of Pickford Court, also attended the meeting. His daughter was born in May 2020 and said the fire safety situation in the blocks has caused his family real worry in the first years of her life.
He said: “I appreciate that there have been issues with Covid, but my issue is that Grenfell was 2017, the five year anniversary is coming up and there’s still scaffolding up on one of the blocks. To me, what was said in January 2020 hasn’t happened and I want to know why the work didn’t start until 2019.
"I want to get to the bottom of it. I want to find out why what you did was not what you said and that’s had a massive impact on me, my family and lots of other residents.”
Wilf described his and other residents’ continued anxiety about the fire safety of all of the blocks following a blaze in Pickford Court in July 2020 and then another on the tenth floor on February 10 this year.
He said: “Eight [fire service] units attended that day. That main fire exit on the ground floor wasn’t functional, it still isn’t. I appreciate you might be waiting for parts, but that door only opened three feet, I’ve got a pushchair, I could barely get through.
“The worst thing for any of these residents is not knowing. The trust has always said it wants to be transparent, open, honest. I want that too, and so does every other person that lives in that block. I haven’t seen it yet.
"The question is why, five years on from Grenfell, is there still cladding to be replaced? It should have been done years ago, 15pc is 15pc too much. The only consistent thing that’s happened is every date you’ve given has come and gone.”
Prior to Christmas 2021, Mr Scott said the Trust had finally completed cladding replacement on four of the blocks and scaffolding that had enveloped the buildings for over two years in some cases was finally taken down.
But speaking about Clifford Court, Mr Scott said: “The difficulty we’ve had there is that when we received the [replacement cladding] panels, they were slightly the wrong colour, which has further delayed us there, which is very unfortunate.
“We recognise that causes further disruption for our customers and our tenants and creates problems because obviously that scaffolding is up longer than we would ever want it to be up. So again, we do apologise for that.”
Because of these ongoing issues, Mr Scott said temporary replacement cladding panels are set to go on to Clifford Court with all scaffolding taken down by April 15. However, since these panels are only a temporary solution, Mr Scott explained scaffolding will have to eventually go back up at Clifford Court for the installation of the permanent replacement panels.
Residents of the blocks previously complained that while the problem ACM cladding had been removed from outside their homes, while they were waiting for replacement cladding the buildings’ bare outer walls left them facing cold homes and heightened energy bills.
At the time, Trafford Housing Trust offered to speak individually with affected tenants and support them in those situations. The trust has repeatedly been criticised for its communication with residents about the issues.
Mr Scott said: “It’s vitally important to us that we keep our customers informed, we have undertaken a number of measures to try and do that and we’ll never pretend that we’ve been perfect in this and we never get everything right but we really have tried to communicate with customers to the best of our ability. The safety of our customers is our biggest priority.”
Coun Rob Chilton said: “Can you give a categorical assurance that the dates you’ve mentioned will be stuck to? Because I think we’ve heard this and residents have heard this before where dates have been given and then have slipped.
"One can understand the Covid disruption but I think at this stage it needs to be categorical.”
Mr Scott replied: “I’d like to sit here and say categorically that we won’t slip past that April 15 date, we are working towards that date and we have no indication this time that anything should slip past that, but we have lived through unprecedented times. I don’t want to blame Covid for anything because we’ve done that enough, but there are things that have disrupted the world that we live in over the last two years.”
