Over 100,000 properties in blocks with unsafe cladding 7 years after Grenfell hearth

Desperate families have spoken of living in fear that they will be the next victims of a Grenfell Tower-like fire as they are trapped in homes with dangerous cladding.

More than 100,000 homes still have unsafe cladding that has yet to have work started on seven years after the deadly blaze killed 72 people. One resident said the situation in his tower block is “terrible” with single mothers, pensioners and people on low income living in anxiety at the outbreak of a fire. Families stuck in dangerous flats are also facing mortgage anxieties and crippling insurance prices, as well as the impossible task of selling their homes.

Some 116,000 residential “dwellings” are in buildings with dangerous cladding that have yet to start remediation work, shocking new figures on Thursday. And 13 blocks of flats have similar ACM (aluminium composite material) cladding as Grenfell Tower and are yet to start remediation work – and 12 of them still have people living in them.

Several schemes were set up following the Grenfell Tower fire which are aimed at rectifying different safety issues. These included the Building Safety Fund aimed at blocks over 18 metres tall, initiatives for the private and social housing sectors to remove ACM cladding, and the Cladding Safety Scheme aimed at buildings over 11 metres tall.

Some 141 more buildings were identified in August as being eligible for one of the schemes. It is a sudden uplift compared to the previous month’s date where some 17 new buildings were identified and 38 in the June data before that. The total number of buildings marked for remediation works across England now stands at 4,771, of which only 29% have been completed.

The End Our Cladding Scandal said the data released on Thursday remained “poor”. “More and more buildings are being identified as unsafe,” it said. “Thousands are still to be investigated. Tinkering around the edges won’t work. What will [ Labour and the Ministry of Housing] do to fix this mess?” It also pointed out there was no information on non-cladding defects or buildings under 11 metres tall.

Earlier this month the public inquiry into Grenfell Tower fire found the 72 deaths “were all avoidable”. It concluded that the deadly blaze was the result of “decades of failure” by those in power, from the cladding industry to building regulators.

The landmark final report laid bare Government complacency and industry dishonesty and greed. Construction manufacturers were found guilty of “systematic dishonesty”, with firms having “deliberately concealed” information about the dangers of its cladding products. But campaigners have warned lessons are not being learned quickly enough as people are still living in dangerous buildings – and efforts to rectify them are too slow.

Minister for Building Safety and Homelessness Rushanara Ali said: “Today’s statistics again show the remediation of unsafe buildings is just too slow. I’m clear the full force of government will be used to ensure building owners get on withthe job and fix homes. Further plans to speed up the pace of remediation will be announced in the autumn.”