Government data to June 2026 shows 4,469 buildings of 11 metres and over with unsafe cladding being tracked, and a London backlog larger than every other region put together.
The Government's monthly building safety remediation figures make the scale of the remaining task clear. As at the end of June 2026, there were 4,469 residential buildings of 11 metres and over identified with unsafe cladding whose remediation progress is being reported.
There is real progress in places. Of the 516 high rise residential buildings with ACM cladding, 500 have either started or completed remediation works, and 477 have completed it. That is the part of the programme with the longest run up and the clearest focus.
The regional picture is less comfortable. As at April 2026, London had 1,078 buildings in government remediation schemes yet to commence works, more than all other regions of England combined. The concentration is not surprising given the capital's high rise residential stock, but it does mean the largest share of the remaining work sits in the most logistically difficult place to do it, in occupied buildings, on constrained sites, in a city where access and out of hours working are already the norm. Legal deadlines now apply, with buildings over 18 metres due to be remediated by the end of 2029 and those between 11 and 18 metres by the end of 2031, and penalties attached to missing them.
The risk in a backlog of that size is that attention stays on the external wall while the internal picture goes unexamined. Cladding is one part of a building's fire strategy. Compartmentation, fire stopping around service penetrations and the condition of fire doors determine what happens inside the building on the night, and on the compartmentation surveys we carry out the internal position is very often worse than the owner expects.
New cladding on the outside and a mess of fire stopping breaches internally is not a safe building, it is a building with a new coat. With that many blocks in London yet to even start, the temptation is to think about the wall and nothing else. Get a proper compartmentation survey done alongside it, because the internal picture is nearly always worse than the landlord thinks, and people are living in there while you work it out.
