No Grenfell links to cladding work at hotels in Hull
HOTELS ARE STILL OPERATING
TWO hotel chains say ongoing recladding work at venues in Hull is not linked to post-grenfell fire checks.
Both the Travelodge in Pryme Street near Ferensway and the Premier Inn in Tower Street near The Deep have been cloaked in scaffolding for months while exterior panels on each building have been removed and replaced.
Both hotels have continued to operate as normal during the works.
Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy five years ago when 72 people died, the government banned the use of Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding on buildings over 18 metres high. However, hotels were not included in the ban.
Despite this, monthly government data on ongoing remediation work to remove and replace unsafe ACM cladding on all identified high-rise residential and publiclyowned buildings in England also includes a section on hotel remediation works.
Overall, 31 hotels in England were initially identified by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) as still having ACM cladding systems unlikely to meet current building regulations.
According to the latest figures to the end of May, 24 hotels have completed remediation or had their ACM cladding systems removed.
Work is ongoing in most of the other cases. The data does not identify the location of the hotels or their operators.
The DLUHC had initially set a target of this month for all dangerous cladding materials to be removed from the other high-rise residential blocks and public buildings it monitors.
With the visible re-cladding work still taking place at both city centre sites, the Mail asked both Travelodge and Premier Inn to confirm whether either were linked to concerns over Grenfell.
In its statement, Travelodge said: “We are currently undertaking some exterior work at our hotel in Hull city centre which is scheduled to be completed towards the end of this year.
“This hotel has been verified safe to operate by independent advisors while this work is being carried out and we are operating as normal.”
The £3m five-storey 80-bed hotel was originally opened in May 2011.
It was sold for £4.5m by joint developers Wykeland Group and Realis Estates a month later to an unnamed private organisation.
The seven-storey Premier inn in Tower Street sits on top of a multistorey car park. It opened in late 2008 as part of an overall £10m development and features 136 bedrooms and a restaurant overlooking The Deep.
In its statement, a spokesman for Premier Inn said: “We are making repairs to the exterior of the hotel which are needed following storm damage to the property last winter and general wear and tear. This work is due to complete this November all being well.”
In 2018 it confirmed plans to replace cladding on 12 of its 780 UK hotels. At the time, it said: “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our guests and team members and so, as a responsible business, we immediately and voluntarily took the decision to have our hotels with cladding over 18m assessed by independent fire safety experts in the days following the Grenfell tragedy.
“This is because of our robust fire safety and evacuation procedures, which include bedroom doors which are fire-resistant and self-closing to prevent fire spreading; sub-divided corridors separated by fire resistant doors; and multiple means of exit.
“Unlike residential blocks of flats, we do not operate a ‘stay put policy’; our teams are well-trained to evacuate a hotel at the first sign of fire; and there are smoke detectors and fire alarms in every single bedroom.
“Although our hotels have been independently assessed as safe to operate irrespective of the cladding used and we have not received any request to change the cladding on any of our hotels, we have nonetheless taken the decision to replace it on the small number of properties involved and we’re doing this by working with local authorities, contractors and landlords.”