Theresa May 'minded' to go beyond Grenfell review and ban flammable cladding

The government is “minded” to ban flammable cladding on high-rise buildings in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, Theresa May has said.

The prime minister told MPs she intended to go further than the government-commissioned review authored by Dame Judith Hackitt, which did not recommend a ban.

The Hackitt review concluded that prohibiting the combustible materials such as those that spread the fire at Grenfell would not address the root causes of risk.

MPs and survivors reacted to the report with anger, with Tottenham MP David Lammy calling it “a betrayal and a whitewash”, and James Brokenshire, the communities secretary, had already hinted the government was considering going further than the report’s recommendations.

At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, May confirmed that was the government’s intention, but hit back at criticism over the decision to launch a consultation on a potential ban, saying it was a legal obligation.

“We are minded to go further, by banning combustible materials in cladding on high-rise buildings,” she told MPs. “We are meeting our legal duties to consult on these proposals and we will not delay any necessary action.”

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May said she had been moved by the testimonies from survivors and families of victims at the Grenfell inquiry, which opened this week.

“I think the deeply moving testimonies that we’ve already heard and will continue to hear from survivors and the bereaved leave no room for doubt that we must learn everything we can about what has happened,” she said. “We must take the strongest possible action to stop such an unimaginable tragedy from ever happening again.”

May’s response was prompted by a Conservative MP, Nigel Huddleston, who urged the prime minister to take tougher action to ban flammable cladding to avoid another tragedy like Grenfell.

Responding to May’s comments, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the government had to act faster, both on cladding and to rehouse families made homeless by the fire.

“Justice has not yet been done, many of those family have still not been rehoused, many are still living in tower blocks where they are worried, around the country, about the safety of the cladding,” he said. “More needs to be done, more quickly.”

More than 300 other high-rise buildings are thought to be wrapped in similar combustible materials. The government consultation on such materials is set to run until late July.

At PMQs last week, May said the government would spend £400m to help councils and registered social landlords strip flammable insulation and cladding panels from high-rise social housing buildings in England and Wales and hinted the government may take action if private landlords did not fund their removal from private blocks.