They were specifically asking us about towers with aluminium composite panels so I would guess they mean that?
So it is actually that they are checking 600, not that 600 have the same cladding.
This is a very sketchy thing now. The BBC and other outlets are banging on about this cladding failing fire tests and it being banned which is not true.
From what I have read it is not illegal to clad buildings with this particular variant of cladding as they are trying to suggest. It IS illegal to clad buildings over 18 metres tall with this cladding.
Then we have the attempt to push the austerity angle at this as well. The reality there is it is cheaper not to do it in the first place.
Then another angle is that the focus is on the social housing numbers where there are 4,000 state owned tower blocks in the UK. 600 are under investigation. 11? so far have been confirmed with suspect cladding.
Lots of hospitals like the one in Lincoln are covered in cladding however if they are 3 story buildings then they are under the 18mtr limit for this cladding. I doubt that eases people's concerns though!!!
Take a walk in Lincoln City Centre (or high buildings in view of the city centre) and you will see construction everywhere. Any land that becomes available in the City centre is immediately built on and turned into high rise student flats complete with aesthetically pleasing panelled (cladding?) sides. Any large office block that becomes available is immediately turned int student flats and the outside is clad. The Premier Inn, Holiday Inn, University campus. All clad. The newer shopping complexes are clad.
Where it "seems" someone in the case of Grenfell decided on the cheaper cladding another council that has found their tower blocks clad with the same has said on TV that they had actually bought and paid for the more expensive (and suitable) cladding!!!
This is another can of worms of local and national governments creating business for their pals in big business, giving contracts to their friends and cronies and then their friends and cronies doing whatever they want in the name of profits.
These are high value projects and many of them have been done on the old government favourite of the past 2 decades...............PFI!!!!
What worries me is that one of the 3 tower blocks in Lincoln last year had a fire all the way up one side because of a power failure in the mobile phone masts (plural) power supply!!! If it had been the one that had been clad then it wouldn't just have been a scorched line up the side!! My mate lives on the 13th floor of this one!!:
EDIT: I know I can be a bit of a conspiracy theorist but the article that I linked to the other day and posted a picture of r.e. the block that had this fire up the side................has been removed from the internet?? Strange. Here's a picture of the same tower block same year but earlier and contained to one flat because it has no cladding. If you look on the left picture you can see how many phone masts and antennas are on top of that!!! Brainfry in there. Virgin Broadband is lightening speed in there though:
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