Replacing cladding needs urgent action, adviser says

Replacing unsafe cladding is "urgent" and making existing homes secure must come before building new ones, a safety advisor has urged.

Dame Judith Hackitt, chairman of the Independent Review of Building Regulations, was speaking after a fire gutted a tower block in Dagenham, east London.

Investigators are trying to find the cause, but the fire service said the building had "known" safety issues and the role played by the cladding would form part of the investigation.

Dame Judith praised the response of the fire service, but told Radio 4's Today it was "really concerning" that "so many people are living with uncertainty and fear about the buildings they are in."

More than 80 people were evacuated from the tower block in Dagenham, two were taken to hospital and all of the building’s occupants have been accounted for, according to London Fire Brigade (LFB).

The incident comes just over seven years after the Grenfell Tower fire which left 72 people dead.

A report into the events of the fire published in 2019 concluded that the tower's cladding did not comply with building regulations and was the main reason for the rapid spread of the blaze. The final report into Grenfell is due to be published next week.

Following Grenfell, 4,600 buildings were identified across the UK as having cladding which was potentially unsafe.

BBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds said latest government figures show 50% of these buildings have either had work to replace the cladding start or been completed.

"That clearly leaves the other 50% where work hasn't started yet."

Olivia Hill lives in a block of 112 flats in Sheffield which was given a B2 rating, meaning it needs remedial work, nearly four years ago.

She is still waiting for any work to start.

"It's horrific, really," she told Radio 4's Today. "There's a lot of blame-passing about who's responsible for the money it's going to cost."

Dame Judith said more needed to be done on identifying those responsible.

"This really about people passing the buck, passing it up the chain and the work has to be done," she said.

"This must be about identifying those responsible and making them pay."

Dame Judith added: "We saw a great response from the fire service in Dagenham and we are very, very lucky that no-one lost their lives given the speed with which the fire spread, which is a real concern," she said.

According to a Facebook post from a contractor, the Dagenham building's "non-compliant" cladding was in the process of being removed.

A planning application document also details "remedial" work being undertaken to remove and replace "non-compliant cladding" on the fifth and sixth floors containing flats.

Tom Symonds said from the planning documents he had seen it appeared that the original cladding was a type of "HPL" - a laminated cladding which has in the past failed fire tests and been shown to be flammable "which is why it was being removed".

He added: "Of course we don't know at this stage whether that job had been completed or hadn't been started. The scaffolding is up to do the work but we don't know how far they got."

Some residents also said they did not hear the fire alarms.

Karthick Kannaiah and his wife Meghana rushed out of their flat with their six-month-old baby and their friend's six-year-old daughter after waking to the smell of smoke.

Mr Kannaiah said he had opened the window to see flames after his wife told him the scaffolding outside was on fire.

"It was as though I was seeing a horror movie," he said.

“We opened the door and saw people rushing towards the stairs. We somehow got out of the building with our baby."

Dinesh Raj's six-year-old daughter was sleeping at a friend's flat in the building

The father of the six-year-old girl told the BBC that his friends and daughter were “calm now, but terrified” when the fire broke out.

Dinesh Raj said he got a call that the building was on fire at about 03:00 and rushed to the scene in his car.

He said the family got out immediately after they smelled smoke, grabbing their six-month-old baby and his daughter.

By the time they were out of the building the fire had spread to the top floor, he said.

A resident who lives on the first floor of the building told the BBC he was awoken in the early hours of Monday morning by one of his neighbours frantically banging on his door.

The resident, who did not wish to be named, said his neighbour had been doing the same for all the flats in the corridor.

He said he saw "explosive" flames and was relieved to get out safely.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said the incident exposed the "'national scandal' of flammable cladding and deregulation in the building industry".

“Once again, a fire has erupted in a residential building wrapped in flammable cladding. There needs to be an urgent and swift investigation of how this has been allowed to happen,” a statement said.

Grenfell United - a campaign group set up to support survivors and bereaved families following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 - said the Dagenham fire highlighted "a lack of urgency for building safety", in a statement published on social media.

The group said the fact that the building had a number of fire safety issues "highlights the painfully slow progress of remediation across the country" and called on the government to speed up the process.