Combustible cladding found in Glasgow high-rises

Some high-rise flats in Scotland's largest city have cladding similar to that used on Grenfell Tower, but council chiefs have not notified either the fire services or the building owners, MSPs have been told.

Raymond Barlow, assistant head of planning and building standards of Glasgow City Council, told MSPs a search had revealed combustible cladding had been used on some private properties.

He said the local authority - which is the largest in Scotland - had only recently notified Scottish ministers about the matter and had not told either the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service or the owners of the buildings concerned.

"We're simply saying we're supplying the information to Scottish ministers and then we wish to see what they wish to do with the information before we take it further,'' he told members of the Scottish Parliament's Local Government and Communities Committee.

Mr Barlow refused to say how many buildings could have combustible cladding, saying only that he was "wary'' about speaking about the extent to which high rises in the city are affected.

The exact number of people killed when fire swept through the Grenfell Tower building in London on June 14 is still not confirmed - although the Metropolitan Police say the death toll "may come down a little bit'' from the current estimate of about 80.

Mr Barlow said an initial check on housing association flats in the city had not found any combustible cladding, telling the committee: "Our trawl and our research from then on was very much on private flatted developments, and that information we only managed to complete in the last couple of weeks, and I have passed it over to the ministers.''

Convener Bob Doris then asked him: "So, combustible cladding has been found in some private properties?''

The council official responded: "Yes, it's just not public information yet.''

Mr Doris replied: "It's now public information because you are telling us.'

A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council said: “Glasgow City Council was asked by the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Working Group to identify properties which featured ACM as part of their construction. This was a lengthy process which involved manually inspecting several thousand paper records.

“We reported back to the Government at the start of this month and they asked us a number of follow up questions which we are in the process of answering.

“We identified 57 privately owned buildings which had some element of ACM in their construction, a much smaller number of which have it as a substantial part of their make-up.

“However there is no suggestion that these buildings are a particular fire risk, all of them have fire systems in place and all of these buildings comply with the building regulations which were in force at the time they were constructed.”

“It is important that people have all the information they need but it is also important that people do not panic. This is why we were content to have the ministerial working group consider what to do with this information. If we had had any fear that people in these properties were at any risk, we would have used our building control powers to shut the buildings and compel the owners to carry out remedial work."