Government underreports number of flats with same unsafe cladding, eight years after Grenfell fire

"Grenfell Tower on fire" by Natalie Oxford is licenced under CC BY 4.0.

Just after midnight on 22 August last year, Amana Farhan was halfway through a four-hour drive to Liverpool, dropping her nieces and nephews back at her sister’s house, when her neighbour called to say her apartment was on fire.

A faulty light fixture on a balcony had combusted. Flames spread over the building’s facade, quickly engulfing the top floors. Despite a lack of fire alarms and a “stay put” fire policy, nearly 300 residents were safely evacuated.

Too panicked to turn around, Farhan, 29, continued towards Liverpool that night. She returned to Slough the following day to police tape and a blackened tower. “We came to the building. It was all locked up, we weren’t allowed to access inside it, and then I see the roof has been burnt off on the right-hand side,” she said.

In 2021, Farhan and her husband started renting a seventh-floor flat in a seven-story building, Mosaic Apartments, on Slough’s central high street. Slough Borough Council and building owner Wallace Estates both knew what Farhan and the other residents did not: the tower’s top floors were wrapped in flammable aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding. The same cladding that ignited on Grenfell Tower in 2017, accelerating the spread of flames that killed 72 people in Britain’s deadliest residential fire since the second world war.

Nearly eight years have passed since the Grenfell fire, but thousands of flat owners are still trapped in unsafe high-rise buildings wrapped in combustible cladding. Government reporting on cladding remediation in England underestimates the scale of the problem and, in some cities, is provably incorrect.

Data obtained from councils under the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) reveals that government statistics consistently underreport the number of high-rise residential buildings–defined as measuring over 18m–in English cities that still require flammable ACM cladding replacement. In multiple cities, most recent Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) data reports that no high-rise residences remain with unsafe ACM cladding. Council records prove this is not true.

Why is Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) Cladding dangerous?

ACM cladding is a type of external building coating made from lightweight aluminium sheets bonded to a non-aluminium, often plastic, core. Due to its affordability, sleek appearance and ease of installation, it was popular among property developers before its broad UK ban in 2018.

Grenfell Tower and Slough’s Mosaic Apartments both had ACM cladding with a highly flammable polyethylene core. When a combustible core is exposed, it ignites, allowing flames to quickly spread from panel to panel. The cladding acts as a chimney enabling fire to scale tall residential buildings in minutes. 

In May 2019, the government announced it would fully fund the removal and replacement of unsafe ACM cladding on all residential buildings above 18 metres, estimated to cost £200 million. In its December Remediation Acceleration Plan, MHCLG announced that all high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding of any kind will be remediated by 2029.

“It totally destroyed my life”

57-year-old teacher Glenn Seaton, is a leaseholder, meaning he owns his Birmingham flat, but not the land it sits on, for a specified term. His building was successfully remediated in 2021, four years after the cladding was flagged as having failed fire safety tests. Seaton said additional fees incurred through increased service charges and insurance premiums led him to break down crying before classes.

“It totally destroyed my life,” he said. “I don't think the government really appreciated the human impact that it has on everybody.”

Misleading data

In data released in March, MHCLG estimates more than 5,000 dwellings in high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding have not completed remediation work. Using UK household estimates, this equates to over 12,000 people living in flats with the same combustible cladding as Grenfell Tower nearly eight years after it caught fire.

But this number is likely significantly higher when hundreds of residents invisible in government publishing are included. Data underreports building numbers in multiple cities across England. At least seven borough and city councils record more residential buildings over 18m than MHCLG with unsafe ACM cladding yet to be replaced than MHCLG. In at least four cities, MHCLG reports no remaining uncompleted high-rise residences where council data obtained under FoI reveals otherwise.

Ritu Saha, 49, lives in a top-floor flat in a 10-storey tower block in Bromley she bought in 2015. Fire safety tests conducted after the Grenfell fire found that the building was wrapped in unsafe ACM cladding. Saha was told that if a fire started on the ground floor it would reach her flat in seven minutes. When the cladding was installed, Bromley council signed off on the building as fire safe.

 “When I bought it, I was like, ‘Oh my god I love this place, I want to live here forever’. One of the hardest things for me is that this situation has made me hate the place that I really loved”, Saha said.

Remediation works on Northpoint, Saha’s 57-flat building, were completed last year. Her building is the only one in Bromley included in MHCLG data showing the status of ACM remediation in England as of 28 February. Data reports that 83 per cent of 515 identified unsafe residential buildings over 18m have received full building control signoff, completing remediations.

In data provided by MHCLG and relevant city councils under FoI, government falsely reports 100 per cent remediation completion rates in Leicester, Lincoln, Newcastle and Nottingham. Council data across these four cities shows 14 high-rise residences, housing hundreds of people, still in need of remediation missing from published data.

Leicester City Council reported the largest discrepancy, with 10 buildings still requiring remediation. The information governance team said works have not yet started. Newcastle City Council said two buildings are yet to be completed, with one yet to commence work. Lincoln and Nottingham councils both reported one building within their respective cities yet to begin work.

MHCLG also underestimates the number of buildings needing remediation in at least two other jurisdictions: Lambeth and Liverpool. In both cases government data reports one to five residences yet to complete remediation. Lambeth council reports eight and Liverpool council reports 10.

In FoI requests, every city council in England was asked to supply data on the status of unsafe ACM cladding remediation on high-rise residential buildings. 10 councils failed to respond before the legal deadline, denied the request or reported that the information was not held. Others reported incomplete figures meaning MHCLG might

underestimate figures in other English councils.

Mounting costs

After unsafe ACM cladding was discovered in Saha’s Bromley high-rise, fire services ordered that a waking watch be installed immediately. Waking watch is a continuous 24/7 patrol of a building’s interior and exterior to ensure sufficient evacuation warning in the event of a fire. The cost of this watch, which Saha reported as £24,000 per month, fell on the residents and has yet to be reimbursed.

To lessen costs, Saha, a university administrator, stepped in to patrol the building herself. “I was going to work in the morning, coming back at seven in the evening and from seven in the evening till midnight I would patrol the building,” Saha said. “That was basically our life for two, three years”.

No flats have been sold in Northpoint since 2017. Across the five years previous, the building averaged five sales a year, according to HM Land Registry records. Flat owners have been trapped in an unsafe building, incurring unavoidable costs for almost eight years. When ACM cladding was discovered, Saha said “the value of our flats went down to zero”.

“We’ve had young couples who had children. These are small two-bed flats. Really small,” Saha said. “They’re not really suitable if you have a child who needs space to run around and play.”

Giles Grover, 45, bought a leasehold flat in 2012 in three-block City Gate complex in Manchester. Manchester City Council signed a completion certificate confirming the building’s fire safety when it was built. “If you get a completion certificate from a building control, you think they checked everything,” Grover said.

2017 testing revealed unsafe ACM cladding and other timber-related fire safety defects. Residents are still awaiting a second round of remediations on non-ACM cladding.

“After three and half odd years, about 12 million quid that’s been spent, all three buildings are still at the upper end of medium risk,” Grover said. Though government funding ensured leaseholders in Grover’s building did not pay for remediation, Grover estimated personal non-reimbursable costs around £10,000.

Amana Farhan moved back into her top-floor flat in Slough in December, after four months in temporary accommodation. “It feels different now. There’s a lot of people I know that have actually moved out. They don't feel safe even though the cladding has gone,” Farhan said.

She criticised the government, council and building owners for failing to remove known dangerous cladding before the fire.

“Why would they put the residents in such a danger? Why are they playing with life?”