An estimated three hundred thousand people are living in buildings with flammable cladding seven years on from the Grenfell Tower disaster, GB News can reveal.
There are still 2,361 tower blocks in England where work to replace the dangerous cladding has yet to start, according to a freedom of information request.
Sixty of these have exactly the same cladding as Grenfell Tower. An inquiry into the disaster which killed 72 people found it was the cladding that was the main cause for the spread of the fire.
Remediation work has only been completed on 991 tower blocks.
Tower block residents ‘don’t feel safe’ as 300,000 people live with flammable cladding
PA / Emma O’Connor / Stephen Squires
Britton House where Stephen Squires livesStephen SquiresThe Government has been criticised for the slow pace of the work, with Labour and Liberal Democrats pledging to solve the “building crisis”.
Residents living in these blocks have told GB News they fear for their lives.
Stephen Squires, who lives in Britton House in Manchester – a building designated as dangerous in 2020 – called on the Government to invest “serious resources” to sort out the problem.
“We do not feel safe. We have not felt safe since we were told there is dangerous cladding on the building, particularly with the fact that the dangerous strip is outside our two-bedroom windows,” Squires said.
“So, we could be asleep one night and you could wake up and there could be flames outside the window and we would need to get out of the building.”
“The Government needs to force the developers to get on with the work. They need to cut out the red tape and put some serious resources into getting these buildings sorted.”
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Emma O’Connor says ‘another Grenfell is inevitable’
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Emma O’Connor, who was one of just six residents to escape from the 20th floor of Grenfell, says the Government needs to do more.
“I’m terrified that we will see another Grenfell. It is inevitable and only a matter of time before another big loss of life.”
“[The Government] continue to put money before lives. There is no justice whatsoever,” O’Connor said.
There are still 124,000 flats where work has yet to start on replacing the dangerous cladding. When multiplying this by the latest Government average of household size, it is equivalent to nearly three hundred thousand people living in unsafe conditions.
Emma O’Connor was one of just six residents to escape from the 20th floor of Grenfell
Emma O’Connor
Stephen Squires is pictured with the ‘End Our Cladding Scandal’ poster
X / Stephen Squires
Mike Amesbury, Labour’s Shadow Building Minister said: “These findings are a stark reminder of the scale of the building safety crisis and the need for decisive action.”
The Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Helen Morgan said: “The Conservatives promised to sort out dangerous cladding on buildings and they still haven’t done so.”
A spokesperson for Adriatic who owns Britton House said: “Responsibility for remediation has been passed on to the original developer that built Britton House, Lendlease.”
A spokesperson for Lendlease, developers of Britton House said: “We’ve always maintained that leaseholders should not be held responsible for the cost of remediation works.”
When approached by GB News, the Department of Levelling Up and the Conservative Party declined to comment.
Source Agencies
