NEWCASTLE City Council is yet to inspect 10 buildings classified high risk because of combustible cladding nearly three years after a London fire disaster exposed a global cladding scandal.
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A NSW parliamentary inquiry on Thursday was told 45 buildings in the Newcastle local government area have flammable cladding, including seven owned by the NSW Government.
But the council is yet to write to owners about the rectification process under a "piecemeal" NSW system that leaves local councils and owner corporations carrying the costs, the inquiry heard.
Only one Newcastle building has had cladding removed after the owners corporation engaged a fire safety engineer and paid to remove a relatively small area of cladding, the building regulation standards inquiry was told.
Newcastle Council officials told the inquiry, chaired by NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, that "resources are an issue in this matter" for a council with "various competing issues".
Mr Shoebridge acknowledged the council's finite resources but said "I'm finding it hard to square" that the council was advised by NSW Fire & Rescue last year of 10 buildings classified at high risk and "you haven't written to the owners".
"What else has been done to ensure the safety of people in those buildings?" Mr Shoebridge said at the inquiry.
A council official said that "I'm not sure anything's been done" beyond owners voluntarily registering their properties with the NSW Government cladding registry, and NSW Fire & Rescue assessing the buildings and referring them to consent authorities, including the council.
A Lake Macquarie Council official told the inquiry four buildings were referred to it. They were not classed as high risk and the council has written to owners, the inquiry heard. Work had started on at least one.
Central Coast Council told the inquiry it had about 12 buildings referred and owners have been contacted about the rectification process. The buildings include a hospital in the Gosford area, the inquiry was told.
Mr Shoebridge described Newcastle as "the standout problem" in the Hunter/Central Coast region for failing to respond to the cladding public safety risks exposed by London's Grenfell Tower disaster in June, 2017 which killed 72 people.
The lack of response was "impossible to understand", Mr Shoebridge said.
The Victorian Government established a cladding taskforce in 2017 under former Premier Ted Baillieu to assess the extent of combustible cladding across the state, advise on rectification and recommend regulatory reforms, with $600 million in government funding to rectify at-risk buildings.
"Unlike Victoria the NSW Government has provided no funding to help homeowners, no resources to councils to deal with the mess and not even rectification standards so people know what to do to fix their properties," Mr Shoebridge said.
There has been a "dreadfully inadequate response" from both Newcastle Council and the NSW Government but because of the "very real public safety issue, doing nothing is not an answer", he said.
Unlike Victoria the NSW Government has provided no funding to help homeowners, no resources to councils to deal with the mess and not even rectification standards so people know what to do to fix their properties.
- NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge.
"This requires leadership and funds from the state government and follow-through by councils, but tragically none of that is apparent in Newcastle."
In a submission to the inquiry the National Fire Industry Association, representing commercial fire protection contractors, said despite new laws in NSW after the Grenfell disaster, "it is clear that the inspection and identification of buildings with potentially combustible cladding in NSW is inconsistent".
"It is also clear that there is currently no determination of the type of cladding used and whether is complies with building codes," the association said.
Two months after the Grenfell fire the NSW Government published the results of an audit of NSW buildings which revealed that 1011 out of about 178,000 audited across the state were potentially at risk from dangerous cladding.
A Newcastle City Council spokesperson said it was only in September that Fire & Rescue NSW advised 41 Newcastle buildings were at risk. Later that month they clarified that seven buildings were at high risk. In October they increased the figure to 16, and by January reduced it to 13, the council said.
Of the 13, three are on Crown land where "we do not have jurisdiction to act".
Despite council questions, Fire and Rescue NSW has not specified how they categorise high risk buildings, the spokesperson said.
"Therefore we have had to develop our own risk rating and criteria to determine where true risk lies."
The council had begun issuing letters to building owners and "we will review these properties over the next two weeks and liaise with property owners".
"Our objective is to ensure our communication is evidence-based and that we do not necessarily alarm owners and residents," the spokesperson said.
In Sydney on Monday the inquiry will hear evidence from NSW building commissioner David Chandler and representatives from the NSW Government's department of customer service and NSW Fair Trading.