In August 2018, the tower was named as one of many nationwide that – once combustible cladding has been removed – revealed a ‘catalogue of fire safety failures […] hidden beneath’, with the British Board of Agrément (BBA) identifying that cladding was ‘not the solid aluminium panels agreed with the contractor’ and was combustible. As a result, Sheffield City Council (SCC) removed both the cladding and the insulation.
Later that year in December, the costs for removing and replacing the cladding were reported to be nearly £4m, which broke down as £455,177 for the cost of removal and £2.8m for building works reinstatement, with ‘no plans to reclaim this money from the original installers’ and extra work including installing new cladding and insulation alongside replacing damaged frame elements and ‘making good’ resealing.
In August 2019, former resident Michael Mullin – who had relatives living in the tower - voiced concern about the report into ‘whether the building was unsafe for a period of five years’, as it had ‘yet to be published […] two years after it was promised’. Mr Mullin carried out two years of research into the building’s fire safety, finding that resident safety was ‘put at risk’ between 2012 and 2017.
This was because SCC ‘didn’t know the specification of cladding panels’ installed, and he also claimed South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (SYFRS) had issued its stay put policy ‘during that time’, which meant ‘lives were put at risk’. He also claimed SCC planned to publish the report in 2017, but it had ‘still not been released’, and that a fire test undertaken in July 2017 showed a fire would spread throughout the building, housing 126 residents, ‘in just six minutes’.
In response, SCC claimed it had not carried out a test on the complete wall system, and was instructed by the government to send ‘any suspected aluminium composite material’ to them for testing, with this failing the test and thus replaced. It did not respond on why the report’s publication had been delayed.
The tower was the only Sheffield block to fail the government’s fire safety tests, with residents having been told to stay put between 2012 and 2017 – the period when it was ‘masked with’ what Mr Mullins said was ‘unsafe cladding’. SYFRS responded by noting that the council had already carried out work to ‘ensure the internal fire resistance between flats was suitable and sufficient’, while inspection officers ‘were satisfied that the compartmentation between flats was satisfactory’.
In January this year, despite having waited for over two years for the report, an objection meant it was delayed further, and most recently it was reported that residents ‘are still waiting for answers’. However, The Star has now reported that the council is ‘finally ready to release the results’ of the investigation, with councillor Paul Wood stating it was ‘finally ready’ and would be translated into different languages for residents, who would be asked if ‘they would rather read the report now, or wait until a meeting can be held in person’.
However, any meeting in person ‘could be months away, due to social distancing restrictions’, and Mr Wood commented: ‘We made a commitment to have a public meeting with the residents of Hanover before we issue the report, that obviously isn’t going to happen in the foreseeable future. We’ve looked at whether we could do a Zoom meeting but that doesn’t work with all the residents.
‘So what we have done is consult with the tenants and residents’ association in the past few weeks and they have given us all the different languages the report needs to be translated into and that’s being commissioned in the next week. When all those reports have been translated we are going to go back and consult with the residents to give them the option of sending the report out to them and taking phone calls with them or delay the report and have the public meeting as promised.
‘If they decide they want to do that it will be months before it comes out with the way things are looking at the moment. We are going to give them the choice, we feel it’s the residents who need to make that decision and we will be consulting with them in the next few weeks. If they decide they are happy for us to send it out to them, then I think it would be in the public realm by the end of July at the latest.’
Resident John Cawthorne said that a meeting ‘could mean another long wait’, so he would ‘rather read the report sooner rather than later’, and argued that a video conference ‘could be held’ that could allow residents to join and ‘allow everyone a chance to discuss it’.