We’re living in constant fear...
TERRIFIED RESIDENTS SAY TOWER BLOCKS STILL HAVE GRENFELL-STYLE CLADDING 15 MONTHS AFTER DISASTER
MORE than 15 months after a fire claimed the lives of 72 people in west London, hundreds of people in Salford are living in tower blocks with Grenfell-style cladding.
A week after the tragedy they were told the material would be stripped from their homes. They’re still waiting. “At the beginning, I didn’t want to be here. My sleep was awful. I kept thinking that the alarm was going off. You wake up thinking you can smell smoke.”
Dawn Lewis is 57 and has lived in Thorn Court for more than 20 years.
The 22-storey block sits opposite the Salford Crescent railway station and is one of the nine Pendleton Together-run high-rises that failed to meet fire safety standards.
After the fire at Grenfell Tower, Dawn says, ‘everyone was talking about it, watching videos on YouTube.’
“I got to the point where I said ‘I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.’ Otherwise we wouldn’t live - you’d make yourself ill,” she adds.
“If you don’t put it to one side you’d be on Valium, all sorts. But it’s always there.”
Instead Dawn, a former security officer, has been trying to focus on practical ways to feel safer in her home.
“You’ve got to be vigilant. I said to neighbours who were worried ‘go and buy a fire extinguisher.’
“No one else is going to say it,” she says.
Julie Eddison is 46 and lives in Spruce Court. She has depression, anxiety and PTSD and says she feels ‘terrorised’ in her home.
“Do I feel safe? No,” she says. “We are in a perpetual state of fear.”
When the fire alarm was set off during the night recently, Julie said she was ‘phoned awake’ at 3.20am by a friend.
“The alarm didn’t wake me,” she says. “You can imagine the terror.”
She says that although Pendleton Together - the housing provider that manages the flats on behalf of Salford council - has taken steps to mitigate residents’ fears, while the cladding remains on the building, ‘no one can relax and feel safe.’
A week after Grenfell, Salford council said that the cladding would be removed from the nine blocks – Whitebeam Court, Malus Court, Beech Court, Salix Court, Spruce Court, Holm Court, Hornbeam Court, Thorn Court and Plane Court. At the time, city mayor Paul Dennett said removing the material was the ‘moral and right thing to do.’
Pendleton Together bosses then installed 24-hour fire marshals, wrote to residents with new evacuation plans and set up a dedicated email address for fire safety concerns. They also commissioned a consultant to carry out a review of the buildings, consulted with residents on a replacement system and installed sounders in the common areas. The cladding from the lower three storeys of all the buildings was also removed.
Jon Smith, who lives in Thorn Court and heads up an action group, says residents were initially kept in the loop with a weekly update.
“But it’s like a dripping tap,” he said. “Eventually it just stops.”
Only one building – the nine-storey Plane Court – has seen significant work, its exposed exterior setting it apart from its neighbours. Over the summer, noises were made in council meetings about potential legal action against the contractor that put the cladding on the buildings. Then it was revealed that Pendleton Together – as a PFI contractor – was ineligible for the £400m pot of money the government had earmarked to help local authorities strip cladding. The town hall announced that Whitehall had also blocked it from lending £25m to the contractor to replace the cladding system. But last week, residents received letters from Pendleton Together saying bosses had secured funding.
It would ‘confirm a new timetable’ for the work in each of the nine blocks next month, according to a Salford council statement.
Among the residents in the tower blocks, the feel-
ing was not so much one of relief – but of frustration. Jon is 72 and lives on the sixth floor in Thorn Court. He laughs when asked if the end of the road is in sight – a Pendleton Together report in March set an estimated finish date of June 2021.
“We’ll believe it when we see it,” he says. Dawn is angrier. “We’ve been lied to,” she says. “When is it going to happen? Where’s the money come from? [We’ve heard] nothing, absolutely nothing. No information. No ‘sorry for the delay.’ I just don’t believe them.”
Much of the frustration among residents is aimed at Pendleton Together bosses, who some residents say have failed to take their concerns seriously. Dawn claims that during a false alarm over the summer, fire marshals were ‘running around like headless chickens,’ adding that they didn’t inform residents in the higher floors that there was no fire.
“We’re getting angrier. If a fire started in this block it would travel so fast,” she says. “It would be like Grenfell. Pendleton Together don’t want to talk about it,” she adds.
Jon says his ‘biggest issue’ is that young mothers and those expecting children are housed in high floors, alongside elderly people and wheelchair users.
“It’s frightening for them,” he says, adding that family members of his in their 70s would need help to get out in the event of a fire.
Jon said that two weekends ago he was woken by the lights fire crews at his window when a blaze broke out – not by the marshals.
Concerns such as these were laid out to councillors in a meeting back in the summer, when Elizabeth Okpo listed a number of issues.
She lives on the 13th floor in Spruce Court - a building she calls ‘Faulty Towers.’ She told councillors there were gaps in the fire doors, that the alarms are too quiet, that fire marshals are not patrolling the blocks and - like many other residents - that vulnerable residents are being housed in top floors.
Pendleton Together chiefs said that fire marshals are equipped with klaxons and reiterated that alarms are set to the ‘loudest permissible volume.’ A spokesman said: “We are aware that a number of residents have raised concerns that they have about vulnerable residents living in blocks.
“We have undertaken one to one visits with residents and worked to support Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service to undertake ‘safe and well’ visits. These have included developing a personal evacuation plan where a customer has requested this.
“There are regular drills to ensure that the processes that we have in place are working correctly. These are undertaken by Pendleton Together and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service also undertake unannounced checks.
“Checks are undertaken on both the day and night shift marshals. All drills have worked satisfactorily. If residents wish to raise any concerns then they should contact us directly.”