Flammable cladding notices to be sent soon

Around 500 buildings - including at least 15 labelled “extreme risk” - will be targeted as letters go out to owners corporations in coming weeks.

Thousands of residents and apartment owners in buildings clad with flammable materials will be notified within weeks.

Letters will be sent to owners corporations at about 500 buildings, including 15 properties considered to be at “extreme risk” where work will begin immediately to remove dangerous cladding.

Body corporates will be given time to prepare a response — which may be as simple as installing more sprinkler systems and fire alarms for lower-risk buildings — that will be approved and paid for by Cladding Safety Victoria.

In extreme cases, residents will be required to move out while large-scale rectification works are carried out.

The blaze in the Docklands Lacrosse tower. Source: ABC

Victoria’s cladding taskforce is also urging the state government to strengthen laws to ensure apartment owners tell tenants if they are living in affected buildings, after residents expressed concern about being left in the dark by owners corporations.

The new requirements would also ensure details of dodgy cladding are contained within residential lease agreements.

Premier Daniel Andrews said the government’s plan was a mammoth but necessary exercise after the taskforce identified 1069 buildings with combustible cladding.

The audit is expected to continue until 2023. Another 500 properties will be checked over the next year, with Victorian Building Authority chief Sue Eddy saying she expected more buildings which needed work would be identified.

Mr Andrews said: “It’s a big job, a big task but we will work very closely with everybody who is impacted by this.

In extreme cases, residents will be required to move out while large-scale rectification works are carried out.

“Each and every resident, whether they are an owner or a tenant, they will be contacted, and will have all the information that they need. They will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. We will waste no time in getting rectification works done.”

A resident of the Neo200 apartment tower in Spencer St, which caught fire in February, said the government’s program to tackle cladding was “a relief” for owners.

“I have been worried we would have to stump up for the cost of fixing it,” he said.

But Blair Warren-Smith, who owns an apartment in a Hawthorn building with flammable cladding, questioned whether there was enough money on the table to solve the crisis.

She said she had spent about $7000 on emergency works and questioned whether owners would now be eligible for compensation for money they had ­already been forced to spend.

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“We’ve been left in the dark for such a long period of time,” Ms Warren-Smith said.

“It’s been a really stressful situation … it’s taken two massive fires to happen (London’s Grenfell Tower and Melbourne’s Lacrosse building) before they’ve done something.”

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