Flats to be demolished over fire safety fears

Two blocks of flats on the outskirts of a city centre are to be flattened over concerns about the safety of the cladding that covers them.

The buildings, on Hopwood Street, off Ringway, Preston, are empty and the dozens of social housing tenants who occupied them have been rehomed.

Community Gateway Association (CGA), the landlord for the four-storey properties – which each house 15 flats – told Preston City Council it planned to pull them down.

They are clad at the front and back with High Pressure Laminate (HPL), the type of cladding present at the site of the Lackanal House blaze in Southwark in 2009 – which killed six people.

It was also the cladding used on The Cube student tower block in Bolton, which had a non-fatal fire a decade later.

Although not as flammable as the Aluminium Composite Material that caused the devastating Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 – in which 81 people died – concerns have also been raised about HPL.

CGA said in planning documents lodged with the city council that, "following a fire risk assessment, it was evident that we would need to replace the cladding with something more suitable".

The housing provider added that the cost of the required refurbishment "made the building[s] uneconomical to repair".

It was estimated at the turn of the decade that HPL could be attached to tens of thousands of buildings beneath the 18m (59ft) height threshold that determined qualification for a government support scheme to remedy cladding-related safety risks.

CGA told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it did not yet have a blueprint for the future of the site once the buildings have been levelled.

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