Britain’s biggest house builder Barratt has found structural design defects within seven more multi-storey concrete frames built over 10 years ago, with the alert first raised when defective ACM cladding was removed following the Grenfell disaster at one major scheme in Croydon.
Construction enquirer writes:
The frame of the Citiscape residential high-rise in the town centre had suffered large structural cracks prompting the immediate evacuation of residents from the first two floors.
Now further investigations of buildings designed for Barratt by the same original engineering firm or by other companies within the group have unearthed issues at seven more buildings, although not as serious as those found in Croydon.
Barratt said it now faces a £70m bill to cover the cost of remediating all buildings, up from the initial £2m estimate to cover recladding the Croydon building alone.
The house builder said it was now actively seeking to recover costs from third parties.
In a statement this morning Barratt said: “As a responsible developer, we appointed independent structural engineers to review all of the other developments where RCFs were designed for us by either the same original engineering firm or by other companies within the group of companies which has since acquired it.
‘The preliminary reviews of all 26 of these developments, the majority of which were designed over 10 years ago, are complete and have not identified any issues as severe as those present at Citiscape….
