Evacuate tower tenants before

Minister calls on town halls to speed up sending samples to be checked

THOUSANDS more residents in highrise blocks should be evacuated if necessary to keep them safe even before tests on cladding come back, the housing minister said today.

Alok Sharma also called on town halls and other social housing bodies to speed up sending samples of cladding to be checked.

He issued the plea after it emerged that just 60 tests were completed by the weekend — with all failing to meet safety standards — despite the Grenfell Tower fire happening 12 days ago.

The Building Research Establishment can test 100 samples a day and was said to be “working around the clock”.

But some councils took at least a week before even taking samples on their buildings to send for checking. Amid growing concerns over the delays, Mr Sharma said: “People should not wait for the checks to come back from these cladding results, they should act now, get the fire service in, check the buildings that they think may be affected and put in place mitigation measures if required or as in the case of Camden, if they need to evacuate, that needs to happen. In Camden it was not just the cladding, there were other multiple failures when it came to the fire safety regime.”

Some fire services around the country, though, were struggling to cope with the number of requests to carry out checks. So far half of the 14 local authority areas that were publicly confirmed by the Government to have cladding which failed the official test were in London.

They were Barnet, Brent, Camden, Hounslow, Islington, Lambeth and Wandsworth.

Thousands of residents have been evacuated from four tower blocks on the Chalcots Estate, Swiss Cottage, after firefighters said they could not guarantee the safety of the buildings due to concerns over fire doors, gas pipes and insulation, combined with external cladding.

Cladding is being removed from three towers in Barnet — Granville Point, Harpenmead Point and Templemead Point. The Newlon Housing Trust confirmed Rivers Apartments, in Tottenham, has the same cladding reportedly used on Grenfell Tower but that the London Fire Brigade confirmed it would be considered a “low fire risk” building after modifications.

Islington council said cladding was to be removed from one of eight blocks tested, Braithwaite House.

Cladding on Clements Court, Hounslow, failed the fire safety test and will be removed “as soon as possible”, the borough council said.

Wandsworth said cladding on Castlemaine Tower in Battersea and Sudbury