Building Safety Minister, Lord Stephen Greenhalgh, has said that some owners are still yet to start work on dangerous Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) buildings.
In a statement he noted that an "unacceptable minority" of buildings have been identified by the Government with unsafe ACM cladding.
45 buildings have been identified as high risk but yet to start work, 13 of which were identified last year. Only seven are considered not to be a risk to current residents as they are vacant. However campaigner's believe there could potentially be thousands more buildings with dangerous cladding that haven't been identified yet. During 2019, 90 buildings started work to remove dangerous cladding, and 159 started work in 2020.
The Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government emphasised that "100% of the high-rise social sector buildings" that were identified as high risk for unsafe ACM cladding have now either been fully remediated or work has been started to remove the cladding, similar to that found on Grenfell.
The Government's Building Safety Fund has allocated £95.5 million in projects of the £1 billion made available to remove unsafe cladding on buildings. The fund was set up to meet the cost of remediating cladding systems where building owners (or other entities legally responsible for making buildings safe) are unable to do so.
Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, commented: "Today's stats show that – despite the pandemic – significant progress has continued to have been made with remediation work either complete or on-site on around 95% of buildings, rising to 100% in all social or student high rise buildings. This is a big step forwards. While there is still more to do, we are helping make the highest risk buildings with dangerous cladding safer, more quickly."
