THE Grenfell Tower fire disaster quite rightly brought a long overdue refocusing on building and safety standards. Much of that rigorous reassessment of buildings has brought to light the extent to which some were constructed using cladding made from Aluminium Composite Material (ACM), which is thought to have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire which engulfed the Grenfell Tower last year killing 71 people. Since then buildings here in Scotland too have come under what has been described as “forensic checks” and a number identified as having cladding found to be similar to that used on Grenfell Tower.
The news that taxpayers would foot the bill for cladding to be removed and replaced on two new Glasgow hospitals, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Children at a cost of £6m, has already been confirmed.
Elsewhere in the city however, residents of a private apartment complex could face a bill of up to £10m to remove Grenfell-style cladding from their building, a figure that translates to the equivalent of £30,000 per property.
Yesterday there was “shock” and “fury” among residents on hearing that they would now likely have to cover the cost. Their consternation is understandable, given that they seem to have fallen foul of shifts in building standards regulation through no fault of their own or indeed that of the company, Taylor Woodrow Construction now known as Taylor Wimpey, which put up the Glasgow Harbour project where the apartments are located.
As Taylor Wimpey made clear in a statement yesterday the development was designed and built in accordance with the Technical Building Standards relevant at the time, and all of the necessary planning consents and approvals were in place at the time of construction in 2001.
Since then, however, aspects of those regulations have changed, resulting in how fire-retardant properties are tested. This new testing regime ,says Glasgow City Council (GCC), means that,guidance on external cladding on such properties now had to be non-combustible. This effectively made the class of ACM on the Glasgow Harbour apartments “impermissible”..It is of course to be expected that building and safety standards change over time as improvements and new demands to such regulations are implemented.
Building companies that have met their regulatory obligations cannot be held responsible for subsequent changes to those regulations. But surely the same applies to residents who purchased their properties in equally good faith and with the belief that their homes were fit for safe habitation. To hold private residents financially responsible for requisite work following changes to safety standards over which they had no control does seem unfair.
For the time being the affected flats at the Glasgow Harbour site have been subjected to interim fire safety measures including 24-hour, seven-days-a-week on site-patrol with three people per building spread across different floors. This, says GCC, means Glasgow Harbour is safe to live in. Along with GCC, Taylor Wimpey is also helping fund a six-week survey currently under way to establish how much it will cost to remove and replace the ACM cladding. While stressing that it does not have any ownership or legal interest in the Glasgow Harbour apartments, Taylor Wimpey insists too that it is committed to working with all parties involved including the property factors Hacking and Paterson to find a solution.
Just what that solution will be though remains elusive. Whoever foots the bill, it’s hard to imagine that responsibility sits solely with the Glasgow Harbour residents. As Grenfell all too starkly showed, a collective role is needed when it comes to ensuring building safety.
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