$1b bill to stop another fire

The UK Government faces a bill of more than £600 million ($1 billion) to replace the flammable cladding on housing blocks in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

THE UK Government faces a bill of more than £600 million ($1 billion) to replace the flammable cladding on housing blocks in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Sixty blocks in 25 areas across England have been found to have unsafe cladding that failed safety checks with 540 blocks still to be inspected.

The Telegraph reported the total bill of replacing the cladding could top £600 million and could be even greater if residents have to be rehoused during the building work.

There are concerns over the cladding used on the buildings after at least 79 people died in the Grenfell Tower inferno after the flammable cladding used on the high-rise tower fuelled the inferno.

The Sun reports in Camden an investigation by London Fire Brigade raised concerns about fire doors and gas pipe insulation with the council temporarily evicting 4000 people from 650 flats while work is carried out.

A letter to residents told them they would be evacuated “immediately” on Friday night with other authorities expected to follow suit.

Leading housing lawyer Jayesh Kunwardia, of London firm Hodge, Jones and Allen, said: “Based on the figures, I would say at least 40,000 could be facing evacuation.

“You only have one authority who has taken action so far, but I am sure we will see others follow suit.”

“There is potentially an extraordinary number of people facing evacuation.

“We don’t even know what sort of material has been used outside of London so goodness knows how much this figure could rise to.”

Other buildings to fail tests are in Plymouth, Portsmouth, Manchester and other parts of London. Council leaders said they had made “preparations” to evacuate if necessary as cladding was removed from blocks in Salford and Manchester city as a “precaution”.

Former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith called for tower blocks to be pulled down and replaced with “proper family-friendly housing”.

He told LBC: “The cost of refurbishing these tower blocks, which were badly designed and planned by socialist planners after the war in the 1960s and ’70s without any due regard to what people actually want to do ... it’s time really to look at them and say the extent and cost of doing them, and actually it makes them more risky – it’s far better if we bring many of them down.”