Questions raised over cladding following Dagenham blaze
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has called for an emergency investigation into the fire that broke out in a block of flats in East London over the bank holiday.
At 2.44am on Monday morning emergency services were called to a fire on Freshwater Road in London and a major incident was declared. More than 100 people were evacuated from an eight-storey flat and two were taken to hospital.
Image credit: Ricardo Gomez Angel
However, by around 12.30pm the London Fire Brigade (LFB) had gotten the fire under control and the major incident had been stood down. Now that every resident living in the building has been brought to safety, attention has turned to what caused the outbreak.
A recent planning document outlines the block of flats was undergoing remedial work to replace ‘non-compliant cladding’ on the fifth and sixth floors. Following this, speculations around the role of cladding in the fire emerged and the LFB have confirmed they would form part of it’s investigation.
‘What I wouldn’t want to do is pre-empt an investigation,’ Patrick Goulbourne, LFB assistant commissioner said. ‘This was a very, very dynamic incident and clearly it’s going to require a very complex investigation, not only to get to its cause but to get to an understanding of the fire spread.’
Goulbourne continued: ‘It’s too early at this time to be able to give any detail on that, but that will form part of our investigation in the coming days.’
Against this backdrop, the FBU has claimed the tragedy has again exposed the ‘national scandal’ of flammable cladding and deregulation in the building industry. The organisation explained the block of flats had been the subject of a fire enforcement notice in 2023.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, said: ‘Once again a fire has erupted in a residential building wrapped in flammable cladding. There needs to be an urgent and swift investigation of how this has been allowed to happen.
‘Hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in buildings like it, with various failings in fire safety. This is a national scandal.
‘For decades the FBU has warned of the risks of deregulation in the building sector. Politicians have put the interests of big business above human life. As we saw at Grenfell Tower, this can have horrific and tragic consequences.
‘It was already known that the Dagenham tower block was dangerous. Time and time again these warning have been ignored by public authorities and by central government. This must change immediately.’
The heartbreaking incident in Dagenham occurred just a week before the publication of the final report of the Grenfell inquiry – a British public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire which killed 72 people and destroyed the entire complex on 14th June 2017.
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