Fears for residents as cladding on 14 tower blocks fails fire tests

Cladding panels from 14 tower blocks in nine local authorities have failed urgent fire safety tests being carried out after the Grenfell Tower blaze, raising concerns for the safety of thousands of residents.

Councils announced plans to rip down cladding on buildings in Salford, Portsmouth and two London boroughs, Islington and Hounslow, as a precautionary measure. The emergency steps were taken as thousands of local authority tenants were warned that their homes were enveloped in potentially flammable materials.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said on Friday that buildings in Plymouth, Manchester, Hounslow and Camden had failed fire safety tests carried out at the Building Research Establishment (BRE).

The government has refrained from naming five other councils where buildings have failed fire tests while landlords and residents are informed, but Portsmouth confirmed that it was among them.

Six hundred local-authority owned buildings where aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding panels were identified on Thursday for testing after the north Kensington tragedy, in which 79 people are confirmed to have died.

In a letter to councils this week, the DCLG permanent secretary, Melanie Dawes, said: “It is important to stress that ACM cladding is not of itself dangerous, but it is important that the right type is used.”

The NHS is reported to be among organisations checking its buildings are safe. The Health Service Journal reported a letter had been sent to NHS trusts urging them to check buildings for combustible cladding after the fire. The government is checking hundreds of further public buildings to see if they pose a threat.

Concern about the cladding panels has spread beyond the state sector, as it emerged that the UK’s largest hotel group, Premier Inn, was reviewing the safety of its buildings amid fears that material used on some properties did not meet safety regulations. Councils were also examining schools and hospitals, the prime minister’s spokesman said.

But private landlords or property developers will not be compelled to submit samples of their buildings for testing, Downing Street confirmed. “The testing facility is available to them and we expect many will use it,” a spokeswoman said. “We are not compelling them. Local authorities are identifying private buildings which have cladding, but we don’t know the number or volume of those yet.

“We expect private landlords which have cladding on their buildings will use the testing site and they will be responsible about that, that’s the message we are getting out to them.”

In Portsmouth, work began to remove cladding from Horatia House and Leamington House in Somerstown on Friday afternoon after testing revealed the panels could pose a fire risk. Council staff would be present in the buildings around the clock “for as long as necessary”, councillor Luke Stubbs, deputy leader of Portsmouth city council, said.

Islington council confirmed that cladding was to be removed from Braithwaite House. Diarmaid Ward, Islington council’s executive member for housing and development, said: “We’re arranging to have the cladding, which is only on the sides of the building, removed as soon as we possibly can by a specialist contractor.

“We’re also stepping up safety measures in the block immediately, with fire safety patrols taking place day and night from today until the panels are removed.”

In Hounslow, west London, ACM panels will be stripped from Clements Court after they failed combustion tests. The aluminium panels were found to have a polyethylene filler between them, the council said. Harley Facades, which also worked on Grenfell Tower, was responsible for the cladding at Clements Court, as the Guardian reported last week.

The fire brigade will carry out home safety tests in every flat in the block over the weekend, and a fire patrol will start on Saturday.

It also emerged that Salford city council decided to preemptively remove ACM panels from nine social housing tower blocks. Residents in the recently refurbished buildings run by Pendleton Together were told that the material would be taken down, though the tests have not yet proven conclusive.

The Salford city mayor said it was the “right and moral thing to do”. “There will be no waiting around in Salford while there are any questions about the safety of our residents,” Paul Dennett added.

Other council tenants face an anxious wait for the results of tests. In Lambeth, south London, the local authority has sent samples from all 31 of its blocks that are fully or partially clad and more than six storeys for testing, although a spokesman said Lambeth believed the materials used were “fundamentally different” from those used on Grenfell Tower.

In Wandsworth, the council announced it would retro-fit sprinkler systems to 6,400 properties in more than 100 blocks.

Premier Inn, which has more than 700 hotels, said three of its properties – in Maidenhead, Brentford and Tottenham – had been specifically investigated during a “detailed assessment” of its estate. A spokeswoman said the material was not the same as that used to clad Grenfell Tower, but the company had called in an expert to review the safety of its buildings.

She said: “Although we have concerns that the fire-retardant cladding used may not adhere to recognised government guidance on compliance with the building regulations for use in high-rise buildings, an independent fire expert has assured us that these hotels are safe and that they are entirely satisfied that there are robust fire safety measures and evacuation procedures in place to protect our guests and team members.”

The Radisson Blu hotel chain said it was conducting checks on all hotels that use cladding systems as a precaution. A hotel in Solihull for which the designers planned to use Reynobond ACM panels, of the type supplied to Grenfell Tower, was never built, vice-president Richard Moore said: “To our knowledge, none of the Radisson Blu hotels in the UK have Reynobond panels, but as a precautionary measure, we are undertaking checks and testing on the exterior cladding of all of our UK hotels.”

Inquiries by the Guardian on Thursday suggested at least 25 towers – including 13 in London, nine in Salford and three in Plymouth – had cladding of the aluminium composite type, and 12 of these were believed by local authorities to have a combustible polyethylene core. Cladding at the other 13 high rises was still being tested.

London fire brigade has said that since the fire on 14 June it has been “flooded” with questions from the public about whether it is safe to live in a tower block.

Fire crews are to visit premises identified as having cladding made of ACM to check the safety of the building.

Additional reporting by David Pegg