A new team of inspectors will check that tall buildings across Nottingham are safe following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
A number of buildings across the city are covered in combustible cladding, including Marco Island, a 13-storey residential block on Huntingdon Street, as well as the Litmus Building in the same area.
The cladding on these buildings is being rectified.
Nottingham City Council now says six temporary staff members are being employed for 23 months to assist with inspection work and enforcement in private rented properties and tall buildings.
They will work alongside Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service to help address any problematic external cladding and any work that may be required as a result.
“The Government have provided funding to support the delivery of the Local Remediation Action Plan (LRAP), which, working with East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA), will enable Nottingham City Council to continue inspecting and enforcing standards in tall buildings to ensure they meet certain standards,” council documents say.
After the Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 people, the Government introduced new fire safety rules, including new measures for high-rise blocks of flats that are at least 18 metres or seven storeys high.
The Government last year announced a new Remediation Bill, which will require landlords of buildings 18 metres or more in height to remove unsafe cladding by the end of 2029, or by the end of 2031 if the structure is between 11 and 18 metres.
The six new staff members will also help to enforce the council’s selective licensing scheme.
The Labour-led council has been running the scheme since August 2018, aiming to make rented properties safer for tenants by requiring landlords to meet certain standards.
The licence requires landlords to pay a fee and covers around 30,000 homes in the city.
Documents say there has been an “above-expected level of selective licence applications that require inspections to be undertaken”.
The first scheme legally expired in 2023, and a new one is now in place.
Under the first scheme, a total of 666 improvements were made to 446 properties, which the council described as a success.
However, some landlords said the fees meant they had no choice but to pass the costs on to tenants in the form of rent increases, and an audit report found this to be correct in some cases.
In total, £640,973 will be spent on the new staff members, funded from the council’s own selective licensing income and Government grants.
