Campaigner criticises Bristol City Council over tower block cladding
Flammable material is on 38 residential blocks run by the City Council
A fire safety campaigner has criticised Bristol City Council and questioned their competency, as work continues to remove dangerous cladding from 38 residential tower blocks across the city.
It emerged so called Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Cladding is on dozens of apartment blocks run by the council after a fire in one last month (October 20).
Shortly after the blaze at Eccleston House in Barton Hill, which injured six people, the Avon Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the cladding had helped it spread.
The council then confirmed the same or similar cladding is on 38 blocks citywide and announced the introducing of Waking Watches while work is done to remove it.
That involves fire wardens patrolling all the blocks 24 hours a day, seven days a week so that if a fire does break out, the alarm can be raised as soon as possible.
Steph Pike lives in a private block in Bristol with fire safety defects and has become a vocal campaigner on the issue.
"I think it's good that the council have taken additional fire safety measures in relation to these buildings," she said.
"(But) my view is that Waking Watches are not the answer and don't actually increase the safety."
"To me it just seems like a huge waste of taxpayer money, money that could probably go towards actually fixing the buildings instead."
Steph says her own block employed a Waking Watch "for almost a year" and it did nothing to help her feel safe.
"They did anything except do their job," she said.
"They were often just sat in the lobby on their phones, they were smoking right outside the building, which is supposedly highly flammable, they were fairly inappropriate towards a number of girls in our building, they just weren't doing the job they were employed to do."
None of that means of course, that the Waking Watches in the council buildings will be the same.
One of the big questions raised by the revelation that dangerous cladding is on so many council blocks in Bristol, is how long has it been there?
So far, despite several requests over the course of nearly two weeks, the city council has been unable to provide an answer.
However, we are expecting some kind of formal response today.
We asked Steph how the situation makes her feel.
"Angry and sad really," she said.
"I thought that Bristol City Council had previously said that they checked all their buildings after Grenfell and they were all ok and I think the ones that had the ACM Cladding (the same as that on Grenfell Tower) had that replaced.
"So, it has come as a bit of a surprise to hear all these buildings have still got this dangerous, flammable type of cladding on them.
"But equally, it just doesn't surprise me.
"The competence of government and local government on this issue has just been awful so I'm not surprised that this has come up."