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One council awarded £80m from government ACM fund
A third of the money given to social landlords last week to pay for the removal of Grenfell-style cladding was awarded to a single London council.
Camden Council has revealed it was awarded £80m of the £248m allocated from the government’s aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding removal fund.
A total of 43 councils and housing associations were revealed to have received funding last week to remove and replace dangerous cladding on 135 tower blocks.
In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster in June 2017, Camden discovered serious fire safety issues at its Chalcots Estate in Swiss Cottage.
The five towers on the estate were temporarily evacuated while emergency fire safety measures were put in place.
And after stripping their Grenfell-style ACM cladding, in March engineers uncovered issues with the blocks’ curtain walling and windows, which are now also being replaced.
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A spokesperson for Camden Council confirmed that its ACM funding includes work to the buildings’ curtain walls, as well as removing and replacing cladding.
However, it is not clear whether some of the money will also cover the cost of evacuating the estate and the waking watch installed in the towers, or payments given to residents to cover higher fuel bills while they are unclad.
Council papers from March suggested that the entire facade works on the estate’s five towers would cost £50m-£56m.
Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Council, said: “We are delighted to announce we have secured £80m from the government, which pays for the re-cladding and new curtain wall at the Chalcots as well as boosting our wider safety programme.
“We would like to thank all the residents who worked with us to make the case to government and reiterate our determination to ensure we follow through on our commitment for a new standard of resident safety.”
A letter sent to Chalcots Estate residents today said the funding would mean the council can complete the work “without impacting our wider programme of improvement and refurbishment of the rest of our housing stock, or our programme to build new council homes”.
And it revealed that Camden Council is “actively looking at legal avenues” against Partners for Improvement in Camden (PFIC), the PFI firm that used to manage the Chalcots Estate, and “its supply chain partners”.
Camden Council announced it would be taking back control of the estate from PFIC in May after the company filed for insolvency.
Some of the government’s ACM fund, which it expects to cost £400m in total, is still to be allocated for another 24 affected high rises.
Statistics published by the government today show there are plans that are either complete, in progress or in place to remediate unsafe cladding on all but four of the social housing tower blocks affected by the ACM cladding crisis.
Progress in the private sector – which is not receiving government funding – has been much slower.
