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External cladding similar to the deadly material used on the Grenfell Tower block in London has been discovered on a four-storey accommodation block for homeless youth in the inner Perth suburb of Leederville.
The apartment block is owned by the Housing Authority and is run by Foundation Housing in conjunction with Anglicare as transitional housing for at-risk youth between the ages of 16 and 25.
The British Government conducting safety checks on an estimated 600 high-rise buildings in England after at least 79 people died when fire consumed the London tower block earlier this month.
Exterior cladding panels added during a recent refurbishment of Grenfell have been blamed for the rapid spread of the blaze.
Housing Minister Peter Tinley told Parliament this afternoon the cladding on the Leederville building contained "combustible material and is not compliant with the building code of Australia".
"Until such time as it can be rectified, Foundation Housing has commissioned 24-hour security on site in order to mitigate any risk," he said.
He said he was advised of the situation yesterday and the safety of tenants was his "highest priority".
Mr Tinley told Parliament last week that aluminium cladding panels used by the Housing Authority in its properties were "quite different" to those used at Grenfell and all were compliant with building codes.
Foyer Oxford has 98 apartments, 21 of which have two bedrooms for young parents and their children, as well as a cafe and a Pilates studio.
Building will not be evacuated
Foundation Housing chief executive Kathleen Gregory said a fire-safety audit was done immediately after the concerns were raised "about a week ago".
"None of the advice that we've received indicates that we need to evacuate the building," she said.
She said the building had "up-to-date fire safety features" but additional CCTV cameras and thermal sensors would be installed.
The building's cladding had been supplied by a Melbourne company, business development manager Chris Smith said.
WA Building Commissioner Peter Gow said Foundation Housing had "acted very promptly and we're satisfied with what they are doing and they have brought in appropriate experts to do the work."
"We haven't got the details of precisely what has been used there so I can't say that it was exactly the same [as that used on Grenfell] but it's combustible and it's likely to be a similar sort of material," he told ABC Radio Perth.
"There is a difference here with London — this is a new building, not a refurbished building, so we expect it to have more fire safety requirements than the older buildings in London, and secondly, it's only around a four-storey building."
The $23-million building, completed in 2014, won the 2015 Premier's Awards for Excellence in Public Sector Management.
Foyer Oxford's website says its "world class complex" is "the largest single-site homelessness service for young people in Australia".
Topics: building-and-construction, fires, urban-development-and-planning, leederville-6007
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