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Tower blocks left unsafe after cladding removed, MPs told
Tower blocks have been left unsafe after the removal of dangerous cladding, MPs have heard.
In a session of the Housing Select Committee today, Claire Curtis-Thomas, chief executive of accreditation body the British Board of Agrément (BBA), told MPs that buildings which had cladding removed were not compliant with fire safety regulations.
She said that in collaboration with a specialist contractor, they had photographed 32 buildings that had aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding removed.
According to Ms Curtis-Thomas, they found on every single one of these buildings that the “substrate” – which generally supports the cladding system – was not compliant with regulations.
In addition, she said two buildings have “serious structural issues as well”.
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According to her, the BBA has discussed this with government officials. Sir Ken Knight, chair of the government’s expert panel on fire safety, however, seemed surprised to hear about the issue.
He said: “That would cause me real concern, because the expert panel has issued clear advice via DCLG [Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government] to both building owners and building authorities that it isn’t just replacing cladding, it’s about the system behind it, the intumescent strips, the separation of the gaps.”
Ms Curtis-Thompson told the committee: “The people that are carrying out the remediation work are either completely ignoring what they’re seeing below the cladding they’re removing or they don’t understand what they’re looking at.
“The lack of competence on the ground to determine whether the job has been done properly is woeful and secondly, the people who are designing these systems, either are complicit in doing a bad job or actually they’re also suffering with rank ignorance.”
She said she had recommended to the government that it carry out an audit of all the buildings where this work is being done, to make sure it was being done correctly.
Clive Betts MP, chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, said in a statement: “We were extremely shocked to hear today the suggestion that steps being taken to remove dangerous combustible cladding from buildings, far from making tower blocks safer, could be putting residents’ lives at further risk.
“We do not have full details of these building but will be writing urgently to the government and the expert panel to urge them to identify them and take immediate action to address the problem.”
