Buildings at three NHS trusts in England have failed fire safety tests in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
None of the buildings in Sheffield, north and south London, were used to for patients, according to NHS Improvement.
Sheffield children’s NHS foundation trust is preparing to remove cladding from one of its buildings following a negative test result.
Cladding from a building at North Middlesex university hospitals NHS trust has also failed the test and is being removed.
King’s College hospital NHS foundation trust in south London announced on Monday that cladding at one of its buildings was being taken down following tests.
A spokeswoman for NHS Improvement said: “Patient safety is paramount. There will be no disruptions to patient services or continuity of care.”
All NHS trusts and foundation trusts have been asked to carry out urgent fire safety checks following the Grenfell Tower fire.
NHS Improvement said it had identified 38 organisations that required extra support to carry out urgent checks. All 38 of these “priority one” trusts have started putting on 24-hour fire warden patrols, it said.
Of these trusts, 30 did not need further action at this stage, NHS Improvement said. A further five were still awaiting combustibility test results. Another three had failed the tests and were removing cladding.
The number of at-risk buildings has risen steadily since the government ordered a full review of high-rise flats around the country, and there is still a 100% failure rate in fire safety tests.
Cladding from 190 tower blocks in 51 local authority areas has failed tests on the flammability.
A Department for Communities and Local Government spokeswoman said there was no timeframe by which officials estimated to have tested all 530 tower blocks thought to have cladding in the country.
She repeated Sajid Javid’s call for local authorities and housing associations to send in samples as soon as possible, adding: “We can only test what we get sent.”
Government experts suggest cladding panels that have been found to be combustible in the tests could still be used safely in some circumstances and warn that removing them could increase fire risk.
An advisory body headed by Sir Ken Knight, the former government chief fire and rescue adviser, said tests carried out following the blaze only examined the filler inside the aluminium panels.
Knight’s panel said in a statement that if a cladding sample were to fail tests, landlords were expected to take recommended interim fire safety measures. But it said it would now consult experts across the country to consider whether the panels could still be used in certain circumstances.
The statement added: “If, in the meantime, a landlord chooses to take down and replace cladding, care should be taken to consider the impact that removal may have on the other wall elements, especially insulation, and therefore on the overall fire integrity of the building as well as other building regulation requirements.”
