Work on at least 2,300 residential buildings clad with non-compliant cladding has yet to start, with the UK Government revealing that more than 4,613 buildings have unsafe cladding.
It comes after Wood Central reported that Dagenham, a building in East London, went up in flames on Monday, sparking fears of another Grenfell disaster. Now, Wood Central can reveal that new data produced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has confirmed that 1,350 buildings had been fully remediated, with 949 buildings also in the process of remediation.
However, this nonetheless leaves 2,331 buildings with unsafe cladding and no start date for work seven years after the June 2017 disaster—with the UK’s besieged social housing industry (already chronically short of supply) amongst the most vulnerable to the cladding risk.
According to UK government statistics, 2,414 social housing blocks had been identified to have life-critical fire safety (LCFS) cladding—with 664 buildings (or 27%) already fully remediated, 1,208 in the process of being remediated, and 717 yet to kick off works.
The numbers come after Wood Central reported that a London council raised the alarm after discovering hundreds of low-rise timber-frame council houses fitted with plastic cladding could be an extreme fire risk.
Last year, Wood Central reported that the Grenfell disaster had been a roadblock to mass timber adoption across UK mid-rise and high-rise buildings. However, after the UK’s leading insurance company Aviva expanded its coverage to include mass timber buildings, Alastair Ogle from Waugh Thielston Architects said the UK’s baseline understanding and knowledge about timber buildings had improved immeasurably:
“Aviva wants to embrace both: widening our underwriting appetite to insure commercial buildings using mass timber and using our risk management expertise to minimise associated risks,” according to Adam Winslow, CEO of UK & Ireland General Insurance for Aviva.
- To read more about the Dagenham crisis, visit the Daily Mail for rolling fire coverage. To understand why the UK cladding crisis has been a roadblock for the uptake of timber in UK mid-rise and high-rise projects, click here for Wood Central’s special coverage.
