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London council outlines £63.5m plan to ensure 87 blocks meet fire safety laws within five years
Newham Council has said it will spend £63.5m on making the 87 high-rise blocks it owns comply with new building safety legislation by 2029.
Under a new five-year strategy, published this week, the council said it will make sure all blocks it owns that are taller than 18 metres, or seven storeys, adhere to the building safety and fire safety acts.
The Building Safety Act came into force last April, nearly six years after the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people. Part of its aim is to improve the standard of high-rise blocks.
Most of Newham Council’s 87 blocks were built between 1945 and 1969 and many have “legacy design and construction issues”, according to the strategy document.
“Given the age of the buildings, the availability of design and construction information is also extremely limited,” it said.
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Shaban Mohammed, cabinet member for housing management and modernisation at Newham Council, said the council was “continuing to identify high-risk buildings” and remove “unsafe cladding”.
However, he said the authority had already taken “considerable actions” to make buildings safer, including a prosecution last year over cladding removal delays on a privately owned block.
All Grenfell-style aluminium composite material cladding has been removed from buildings, the council said.
As part of the legislation, high-rise building owners have to register properties with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR).
The council said it had already registered and submitted all key information on its 87 blocks with the BSR.
In November, the BSR revealed it planned to check 40% of “higher-risk” blocks by April 2026 and warned it will take action if work to remove dangerous cladding has not started.
In its strategy, Newham Council said it would also ensure “qualifying leaseholders” are protected from “building safety defect costs”.
It comes amid the ongoing wider building safety crisis, with many leaseholders having to foot the bill for remediation costs and round the clock waking watches.
Newham Council also vowed to “engage with residents and share building safety information with them”.
Mr Mohammed added: “We will shortly be starting to engage with our residents to ensure they understand what the new regulations might mean for them and their homes along with providing new resources to find information and log complaints.”
At the end of last year, the London authority revealed plans to buy a 172-home block in Essex as part of its accelerated acquisition programme in a bid to reduce temporary accommodation pressures.
Newham Council outlined plans to acquire Burnt Mills in Harlow and let “at least 50%” of the flats at Local Housing Allowance rent to homeless households currently stuck in temporary accommodation. The remaining homes will be let at market rates.
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