Residents Fear New Rules Could Leave Dangerous Cladding on Flats
BBC News
BBC Homepage
Skip to content
Accessibility Help
Your account
Home
News
... (rest of the navigation menu)
BBC News
Menu
Home
Climate
World
UK
Business
Tech
Science
... (rest of the menu categories)
Residents fear new rules could mean dangerous cladding is left on blocks of flats
Image caption: Natasha Parcell is living in a hotel following a fire in the tower block where she owns a flat.
By Phil Hendry
BBC News
Published 44 minutes ago
When Natasha Parcell first got her foot on the property ladder little did she expect to be one of the latest victims of the cladding crisis.
"I was really excited to have something of my own," she says, "[but] very quickly in the first year I was told it was actually no longer safe or mortgageable."
The 33-year-old is currently living in a hotel after being evacuated from her flat, in east London, following a fatal fire in her tower block earlier this month.
All she was able to take with her were some plastic bags filled with clothes.
The blaze came just a day after residents got approval to have all the flammable cladding on the building removed.
However, she is worried new rules - which come into force on Wednesday - may allow the developer Barratt to backtrack on that decision. The rules state cladding can remain in place on blocks if the risk is deemed to be "tolerable".
"To find out that they're [the government] trying to change the standards in which they might remediate our buildings is quite terrifying," says Parcell.
"Literally two weeks ago, we had a fatal fire in our building and we're still being told that they might change the rules and it might be a tolerable risk. I just don't understand when human life, or my life, became a tolerable risk to anybody."
The developer of Parcell's flat, Barratt Redrow, says despite the new rules it still intends to remove all the flammable cladding on her tower block as soon as possible.
... (rest of the article content)