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Housing secretary to correct record after mistakenly claiming only 24 tall buildings need fire safety work
The housing secretary will write to MPs to formally correct the record after mistakenly claiming that only 24 tall buildings in England required fire safety remediation work during a parliamentary session on Monday.
Simon Clarke had been asked by Labour’s Hilary Benn to provide his “assessment of the total number of properties in England that have yet to be made safe”.
Mr Clarke replied: “My commitment to making sure that we follow through on the issue of remediating unsafe buildings is total.
“There are 24 buildings over 18 metres that have yet to be remediated in the way that the right honourable gentleman sets out.”
The answer sparked confusion among residents of dangerous buildings on social media, and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has now confirmed that Mr Clarke made an error.
A source told Inside Housing that he “misspoke” and will be writing to Hansard, Mr Benn and the select committee that scrutinises his department’s work to set the record straight.
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The government does not have an overall official number for the buildings that will require remediation work for fire safety issues.
It does provide regular figures on the remediation of buildings taller than 18 metres with aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding, the material used on Grenfell Tower, but this is only a fraction of the total number of buildings that will require remediation.
The latest dataset under this programme shows that a total of 486 buildings of this type have been identified, with 345 having entirely completed the remediation process.
A further 93 have reached a stage in the process where the cladding has been removed but the works are not finished. This leaves 48 where there is still cladding on the walls, of which 24 are yet to start.
This latter number may be what Mr Clarke was referring to, but DLUHC declined to explain how his mistake had arisen.
In Mr Benn’s question he specifically referred to “unsafe cladding and other fire safety defects”, meaning he was seeking an answer beyond the narrow scope of buildings with ACM cladding.
While there is not an official figure for these buildings, the government does release numbers relating to the buildings that have applied for remediation funding outside of its ACM scheme.
In total, 3,470 buildings have registered for funding under this scheme. Of these, 1,195 have been approved for funding – although being excluded from funding does not necessarily imply that a building is safe.
Of these buildings, only four have been completely fixed, with a further 54 remediated and awaiting final sign-off. A further 248 have started work.
The government said in June that it is “currently monitoring” 1,585 high rises with dangerous cladding, of which 903 still had the materials on their walls. It is not clear how it arrives at this number.
There is no official number for the buildings below 18 metres with issues, although a government pilot exercise suggested that up to 8,890 will require work to fix them because of “life safety” risks.
In an interview on Radio 4 on Monday, Paul Scully, building safety minister, also used the ‘24’ figure – although he caveated his answer by saying it specifically related to ACM cladding.
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