Hospitals rated high fire risk

Authorities say up to 38 may be as dangerous as London’s Grenfell Tower

Up to 38 hospital sites in Britain could be as dangerous as Grenfell Tower and nine have been identified as especially at risk, fire chiefs say. The alert came as more than 17,000 care homes and private hospitals were ordered to undertake their own safety reviews following the disaster.

Meanwhile, authorities in Germany yesterday evacuated 72 residents from an 11-storey residential building in the city of Wuppertal while cladding is replaced.

Fire inspectors in the city have had concerns about the building since 2010 but decided to act after the London fire which killed at least 79 people this month. “We know it’s a burden for residents to be moved without any notice, but we felt we had to act immediately since there are clear dangers to life and limb,” spokeswoman Martina Eckermann said.

In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday ordered a national investigation into the use of potentially flammable cladding on high-rise towers.

It follows checks on cladding at residential tower blocks in which all 95 samples so far submitted by councils failed fire safety tests.

The PM’s official spokesman said the national investigation could be conducted as a second phase of the public inquiry already announced into the west London blaze.

NHS regulators last week ordered an audit of every hospital amid concerns about wider use of the cladding.

The National Fire Chiefs Council yesterday said 38 NHS sites had been found to have similar characteristics to those of Grenfell and nine of those are at greatest risk.

Over the weekend, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, instructed every inpatient hospital to undergo safety checks within 36 hours.

But the demand was met with chaos and fire chiefs said they could not cope with the volume of work on top of efforts to maintain public safety after Grenfell.

Instead, they have drawn up a list of the buildings that need urgent checks because of the nature of the risks found in the audit.

Neither the council nor NHS Improvement — the watchdog which carried out the exercise — would name the sites or provide details of the findings.

An NHS Improvement spokesman said: “Fire safety should be an absolute priority for the NHS. That’s why we are checking with all NHS providers of care in England that they have identified any risks and are taking any action necessary — both in terms of cladding specifically, but also on fire risks more broadly.”