60 UK high-rise buildings fail fire safety tests after Grenfell tower tragedy

Test results on building materials in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster have revealed that 60 high-rise blocks in 25 areas of England are unsafe, the British government confirmed.

The tower blocks are among 600 buildings across the country being tested for potentially dangerous cladding, or siding, in light of the blaze that left the apartment block a charred shell.

The national testing was ordered after an inferno engulfed Grenfell Tower in west London on 14 June. The tower's cladding — panels widely used to insulate buildings and improve their appearance — was believed to have rapidly spread that blaze, which killed at least 79 people.

The number has been steadily rising over the weekend and has almost doubled since Saturday. The number of buildings at risk is likely to grow as owners and local officials provide more samples for safety tests.

The announcement came after Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, revealed that all of the buildings that had 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 news came as the Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said that the “frankly outrageous” lack of clarity over the number of deaths from the Grenfell Tower disaster was “driving a wedge between authorities and those they are elected to serve”, and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said the 79 declared victims had been “murdered by political decisions”.

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