Bolton fire: Government warned over laminate cladding risk before student flat block blaze
An investigation is under way into the cause of a fire that “spread rapidly” at a student accommodation block in Bolton covered in cladding.
Safety campaigners have warned the blaze on Friday night had echoes of the Grenfell Tower disaster after eyewitnesses blamed the spread of the fire on the cladding.
The blaze quickly gutted the top floor of the building and caused substantial damage through the following two stories of the student flat complex known as The Cube – leaving 220 students homeless.
And while it has been confirmed the building did not have the same aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding that led to the deaths of 72 people at Grenfell Tower in 2017, the local authority was aware the building had been covered with a high pressure laminate (HPL) variety of the building material.
In July government experts said HPL cladding should be removed from any high-rise building more than 18m tall over concerns that some varieties of the material are unsafe – with an advice note saying some grades of the panelling were “very unlikely to adequately resist the spread of fire”.
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