Eight hundred flats evacuated

Risk: Unsafe cladding to be removed

Eight hundred households are to be evacuated from a council estate in north London in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire to allow “urgent fire safety works” to take place.

The high-rise buildings on the Chalcots estate in Camden were being emptied last night after firefighters said they “could not guarantee our residents’ safety”, local council leader Georgia Gould said.

She said that a rest centre had been set up and residents were being found hotels and other accommodation.

Camden Council initially said just some 161 households in the Taplow building on the estate were being “temporarily decanted” to allow up to four weeks of work to be done. But Ms Gould later said: “We think at the moment it’s about 800 (households) but it’s an emerging picture.”

The council had already announced that it would immediately begin preparing to remove cladding from five towers on the estate discovered in checks following the fire in north Kensington which killed at least 79 people.

Scotland Yard also revealed manslaughter charges are being considered by detectives investigating the blaze in the west London tower, which had failed fire safety tests.

As police continued to unpick the roots of the disaster, Ms McCormack said a string of criminal offences were now being considered. Documents and materials had been seized from a “number of organisations”, she added.

HORROR: Grenfell Tower went up like a torch and right, its suspect cladding