Sixty towers across England found to have unsafe cladding

Tests in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster have revealed that 60 high-rise buildings in 25 different areas of England are unsafe, the government has announced.

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There are concerns over the cladding used on the buildings after reports that the materials used on the Kensington tower block, in which at least 79 people are believed to have died, caused the fire to get out of control.

The number rose from 34 tower blocks across 17 local authorities. The announcement came after Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, revealed all of the buildings that have so far submitted cladding samples have failed combustibility tests.

“We expect that authorities and landlords are very sensibly giving the highest priority to buildings with which they have most concern. But we should not be in the position where buildings have such cladding on them. How this occurred – and preventing this from happening again – is likely to be a key question for the public inquiry,” Javid said on Saturday.

The towers deemed unsafe so far are in Manchester, Portsmouth and Sunderland, as well as in Norwich, Doncaster, Stockton-on-Tees and Plymouth and in seven London boroughs. They are Barnet, Brent and Camden, as well as Hounslow, Islington, Lambeth and Wandsworth. A further 11 areas, accounting for 27 of the unsafe buildings, have yet to be named.

Sunderland and Camden – where an entire estate housing about 4,000 people was being evacuated over the weekend – share the greatest number, with five towers each.