There are still 86 private residential apartment towers in England where the government has yet to find out what their owners plan to do about replacing their potentially dangerous cladding following the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy, it has been revealed.

And a list of the towers has not been made public, even though apartments within them may be advertised for sale or to rent. Flats within other towers that are instead waiting to begin works certainly are.

For example there is a £560,000 two-bedroom apartment currently SSTC within Denning Point in London. It’s a former council tower block that was transferred to a social housing provider and subsequently had some of its flats upgraded into luxury units. The tower is still waiting for work to begin on removing and upgrading its cladding.

The listing for the flat, which is still live online, makes no mention of the 23-storey tower’s status; it was found post-Grenfell to feature cladding that is ‘not up to standard’.

Slow pace

The pace of cladding replacement is slow in England, particularly among privately-owned high-rise residential towers that feature the Aluminium Composite Material (ALC) now deemed unsafe by Building Regulations post-Grenfell.

The MHCLG says that of the 201 private towers involved, two have had their cladding replaced, 12 have work under way and a further 101 have plans in place or are in development.

But for the remaining 86 tower blocks, MHCLG says it has been unable to find out what’s being planned, although this has reduced from 200 in June.

“The remediation of buildings with unsafe ACM cladding systems is a complex process,” the MHCLG says. “Remediation work involves addressing any issues with the exterior cladding system and broader fire safety systems for each building.”

The Ministry says the 11 local authorities with the greatest concentration of towers whose cladding has failed Building Regulations tests are Brent, Liverpool, Tower Hamlets, Bristol, Manchester, Wandsworth, Greenwich Newham, Westminster and Salford.