City buildings had panels similar to Grenfell Tower
Te Papa Museum, hotels, supermarkets, a high school and apartment blocks in the capital are just some of more than 100 Wellington buildings with cladding similar to that seen in London’s fatal Grenfell Tower fire.
Wellington City Council has released the list of 112 buildings it identified that were clad in aluminium composite panelling (ACP), which was linked to the Grenfell tower disaster in June 2017 that claimed 72 lives.
In June, the owners of 18 buildings in the capital were told to seek an engineer’s fire assessment.
Although they have now been deemed ‘‘low risk’’, the council says it wanted to be ‘‘transparent’’ with the public.
In a statement it says none of the buildings present significant concerns in terms of the presence of ACP and the safety of occupants.
In 2017 the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment investigated the use of aluminium-composite panels (ACP) on New Zealand buildings. To assist with that work, the council investigated buildings featuring ACP around the city.
That confirmed the exteriors of the 112 buildings in Wellington City feature ACP to a greater or lesser degree.
The type of ACP in 47 buildings could not be established, including Wellington’s tallest building – The Majestic Centre.
The buildings ranged from properties with varying levels of exterior ACP cladding on their facades to premises where the presence of ACP may be limited to some exterior signage.
The council’s building compliance manager, Chris Scott, said about 4800 building files across the city were reviewed. Buildings that were identified through this process were then visually checked.
It had taken some months to make the ACP list public because the council has been working with the building owners, Fire and Emergency New Zealand and fire safety experts to ensure the status of all buildings was fully understood and owners had a chance to provide information to occupants, he said.
‘‘We have found that no building gives us significant concerns in terms of the presence of ACP and the safety of occupants.’’
‘‘The multi-storey buildings with elements of ACP have generally been built in the past three decades and feature a variety of life safety features that allow occupants time to evacuate the building in the event of fire.’’
Te Papa spokeswoman Kate Camp said the museum had a small amount of ACP cladding, the risk was assessed as low but it decided to replace it anyway. ‘‘Keeping people and taonga safe is incredibly important to us, we appreciate the work the WCC did to assess buildings across town.’’
The list also included a number of hotels where ACP was located, including Hotel Sofitel, Bolton Hotel, The Thorndon Hotel, Rydges Hotel, Quest and Novotel.