Half of Bristol council blocks have flammable cladding

More than half of council tower blocks in Bristol have flammable polystyrene cladding which will be removed after a fire last month.

Removing the cladding could take a decade and fire safety experts are warning hundreds of tower blocks across the country might be affected.

Residents living in nearly 3,000 flats across 38 tower blocks will see Bristol City Council remove polystyrene cladding on their homes and replace it with a rock-based cladding. Meanwhile waking watch marshals will patrol affected tower blocks as a safety measure.

Concerns were sparked last week after the Avon Fire and Rescue Service said the blaze at Eccleston House in Barton Hill in October, which seriously injured six people, was spread by the expanded polystyrene (EPS) cladding used on the outside of the tower block.

One tower block with EPS cladding is Twinnell House in Easton, where a fatal fire broke out in September on the top floor. While the fire didn’t spread, council chiefs said they weren’t sure whether the fire could have spread via the cladding if it started on a floor lower down.

Councillor Tom Renhard, cabinet member for housing, gave details about how EPS cladding affected Bristol’s tower block residents, while speaking to the World at One programme on BBC Radio Four on Thursday.

He said: “One of the real challenges with getting all of the blocks remediated and refurbished is the availability of the market, both in terms of scaffolding and also the labour and materials to carry out the work. We couldn’t scaffold 38 tower blocks tomorrow, because the resources wouldn’t be available locally to do that. We’ll go as quick as we can though because we want to proceed without delay.

“This is a precautionary measure that we’re taking. We’re arranging meetings with all of our residents in high-rise blocks, in conjunction with the fire service, so that residents can meet us and ask questions. We’ll be in regular communication as well, and they should follow any advice that we provide.

“The blocks with waking watches now have a simultaneous evacuation policy, so if there are concerns over a fire or smoke, they should be getting out of the building. The regulations have moved on a lot since Grenfell, and the original focus from Grenfell was on aluminium composite material cladding, which this is not. There’s new information that’s being brought forward all the time.”

Flammable cladding contributed to the spread of the fire at Eccleston House in Barton Hill – photo: Martin Booth

EPS cladding is a different material than the type which was found to cause the spread of the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, in which 72 people died. But concerns about EPS cladding have been growing over the past few years.

A recent freedom of information request made by the Bristol Cable showed parts of the cement render on the cladding at Eccleston House had cracked, exposing the polystyrene.

Arnold Tarling, a fire safety expert, told the World at One show the council could take the cladding off much more quickly, by using abseilers instead of waiting for scaffolding. He also said a major fire in London six years ago spread through polystyrene.

He said: “We should have been dealing with [EPS cladding] long ago. There was a fire in west London in the summer of 2016, which was a polystyrene-based fire. In September 2019, London boroughs asked the government about whether they would be testing EPS panels on buildings and on external walls, and the government refused to test them.”

The council will write to all affected tower block residents, explaining the works and new waking watch patrols. Sprinklers could also be installed in some tower blocks. In January 2019, the council said it would install sprinklers in all blocks which needed them, in a five-year programme. But so far, only one tower block has actually seen sprinklers installed.

A spokesperson from Bristol City Council said: “While works to accelerate both our EPS cladding removal programme and sprinkler programme are planned, prepared and completed we will be updating the evacuation policies and introducing a waking watch to 38 of our blocks.

Main photo: Betty Woolerton

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