'We could be the next Grenfell': Dagenham fire is a chilling reminder of the UK's cladding crisis

The building safety crisis has been rumbling on for seven years since the Grenfell Tower disaster – and the fire in Dagenham is the latest chilling reminder of the failure to tackle fire safety in Britain’s buildings.

That’s the view of Steve Day – a resident living in one of the thousands of buildings currently awaiting remediation works to remove flammable cladding and fix fire defects.

The blaze at the tower block on Freshwater Road in Dagenham, East London, saw two people hospitalised as smoke billowed out of the building early on Monday (26 August) morning.

A further 80 residents were evacuated while London Fire Brigade (LFB) confirmed that 20 residents were rescued.

LFB commissioner Andy Roe confirmed the building had a number of fire safety issues known to the fire service.

Day, who lives in Royal Artillery Quays in Greenwich, south-east London, has been caught up in the crisis for five years and told the Big Issue the news of the fire has shaken residents.

“The fire has really upset all our residents and I’m getting so many questions now about all these panels they want to leave on,” said Day.

“It’s an appalling situation and we could be the next Grenfell because they’re big enough towers.

“The Dagenham fire has shown the increased risk when you have scaffolding up, exposing the cladding.

“It is showing that remediation is now a lot more risky than I think people thought. They just thought of it as a necessary evil but actually it could really increase the risk because you’re exposing the flammable insulation far more than you would normally.”

Day and his fellow residents are currently awaiting remediation works to begin on the 16-story towers where they live and prime minister Keir Starmer visited in 2021.

Residents are locked in a disagreement with developer Barratt over remediation works with Day unhappy on plans to leave extruded polystyrene (XPS) panels on the building, claiming they are outlawed on new-build properties.

A spokesperson for Barratt Developments PLC said: “As founding signatories to the Building Safety Charter, we have always been clear we will carry out any necessary remediation at historic buildings at no cost to leaseholders.

“Any remediation will be carried out in line with a PAS 9980 Fire Risk Appraisal undertaken by a qualified fire engineer, and approved by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), as prescribed by government as part of the Developer Remediation Contract we signed in March last year.

“At Royal Artillery Quays, we are currently awaiting approval from the BSR and are well placed to begin mobilising for a start on site as soon as this is received.”

Day called on the government to take action following the Dagenham fire to protect leaseholders from safety risks and higher costs.

“There are currently 1.7 million excluded leaseholders who want protection so they need to fund the remediation of those,” added Day. “They’re not responsible for defective building so that needs to be covered and we think the construction industry should pay for that, not the taxpayer.

“I’d also like to see the developer contracts change to basically meet the same standard as for new buildings.

“All remediations need to have all flammable material off the building.”

In total, 40 fire engines and around 225 firefighters attended the blaze in Dagenham on Monday.

Now firefighters are looking at how fire safety issues may have contributed to the incident.

“We will now begin a full investigation into the fire and its cause,” said LFB’s Roe. “This was a very dynamic and challenging incident, and we know there will undoubtedly be concerns around the fire safety issues present within the building and this will form part of our report.”

There has been slow progress on fixing the building safety crisis in recent years.

The Conservative government managed to make progress in protecting some leaseholders from having to pay for costly repairs to make buildings safe, instead passing the costs on to developers.

A total of 52 property builders signed a building safety pledge committing to fix life-critical issues in high-rise buildings last year.

Earlier this year, the government won a landmark court case to force one developer, Grey GR, to carry out works on Vista Tower in Stevenage following the introduction of new powers under the Building Safety Act.

Following the verdict, then-housing secretary Michael Gove said the government would “see building owners in court if they fail to fix buildings.

But thousands of buildings still have unsafe cladding on them.

Government figures show work is yet to start on half the 4,630 residential buildings over 11 metres identified as having unsafe cladding. Remediation works have been completed on only 1,350 buildings – less than a third.

A spokesperson for the End Our Cladding Scandal pressure group said: “Seven years after Grenfell, there are still many thousands of buildings across the country with life-critical fire safety defects and the pace of remediation has been shockingly slow.

“Being “in negotiations” about remediation or having “plans in place” counts for little when dangerous cladding – or other construction defects that enable fire to spread rapidly – remain on people’s homes. 

“The incident demonstrates why action remains so urgent. Fire won’t wait while the legal and administrative battle rumbles on for years at each individual building. Residents’ safety must be our number one priority, and we need to see the new government step in and urgently get a grip of the spiralling cladding and building safety crisis.”

Fire safety will be in the spotlight once again next week when the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report is released on 4 September.

The latest development in the long-running inquiry comes almost two years after the final hearings were held.

The Metropolitan Police has said it will wait until the final verdict before considering whether to charge anyone in connection with the 2017 fire, which killed 72 people.

The Dagenham fire is another example of why the slow progress on fire safety continues to put lives at risk, according to Grenfell survivors and bereaved families.

“We wake up to the graphic images of the Dagenham fire, an incident that happened in the middle of the night over a bank holiday weekend when many residents would have been at home, a scenario we have warned about for seven years,” said a Grenfell United spokesperson following the fire.

“This highlights the painfully slow progress of remediation across the country, and a lack of urgency for building safety as a whole, including the implementation of personal evacuation plans for disabled residents which needs urgently addressing.

“We are a week away from the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 Report. The fact that when a fire happens, and the best we can hope for at the moment is ‘a near miss’, speaks volumes of the progress made since 14 June 2017. We expect the Labour government to take action to speed up remediation on unsafe buildings, where their predecessors failed.”

Labour’s housing secretary Angela Rayner said: “Our thoughts are with all those affected by the fire in Dagenham at this very difficult time. 

“We are in close contact with the London Fire Brigade, council and other agencies on the ground to ensure those affected are being looked after.”

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