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Cladding firm lay-offs follow £240,000 fine for safety failures
The boss of a contractor that was fined £240,000 for safety failures over the removal of Grenfell-style cladding has sacked certain members of the project team that were involved in the work.
Bledi Pashollari, founder and managing director of Green Facades, told Inside Housing that due to the “severity of the misconduct”, the individuals had been dismissed.
The firm’s construction director, site manager and site supervisor have all been dismissed.
“Unfortunately, whilst this may seem drastic, in the circumstances, no other course of action was possible,” he said in an emailed statement.
The action has come after Green Facades was fined £240,000 by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) over a cladding removal job at The Circle, an eight-storey building on Henry Street in Liverpool.
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London-based Green Facades had been contracted to remove aluminium composite material (ACM) panels, the type used on Grenfell Tower, and combustible insulation from the block.
However, during a site visit by an HSE inspector in January last year, combustible cladding material was found lying on residents’ balconies, the agency said.
Prior to that, combustible material had been left exposed, while there was “inadequate means of escaping from the scaffold which was being erected”, the HSE said.
Green Facades had been subject to earlier enforcement for similar breaches during cladding removal at a site in London, according to the HSE.
HSE inspector Jackie Western said: “The disturbing irony of this case is that work to protect residents from fire risk ended up making the situation more dangerous.
“Despite earlier interventions and advice from HSE, and the availability of a wealth of guidance from HSE and others, this company continued to fail in its duty to address the risk of fire, putting people’s lives at risk.”
Mr Pashollari added: “We are hugely embarrassed by this event and have devoted a lot of effort into establishing improved methods of work to ensure that this is not repeated."
“We take health and safety extremely seriously, both in the interests of our own personnel but equally to protect the residents of the apartments that we are re-cladding in order to make safe from the risk of fire, thereby to avoid any repeat of the tragic loss of life at Grenfell Tower in 2017.”
Green Facades has appointed a new construction director, a project director and two senior contract managers, Mr Pashollari said.
The firm, which describes itself as a building envelope specialist contractor, has worked on a range of projects in its 10-year history including housing developments, schools and universities, according to its website.
The owner of another tower block in east London was this week ordered to pay out just over £60,000 after a successful prosecution for a delay in removing flammable cladding by a London council.
During a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, Chaplair was fined £30,000 and ordered to pay costs of £30,000, along with a £190 victim surcharge.
It comes after Newham Council brought the case for failing to meet a deadline to remove dangerous cladding from its Lumiere building at 544 Romford Road, London.
The latest London Assembly figures in October revealed that more than a quarter of London’s high-rise residential buildings with dangerous cladding are yet to have remediation work completed.
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