EXPERTS have been called in to test the panels on the outside of Swindon’s tallest building after it emerged that safety checks called for in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster have still not been carried out.

Yesterday, contractors who have been working on cladding tests in London met council officers at the David Murray John Tower.

In the days and weeks that followed the fire at Grenfell Tower in June, the 21-storey building unsurprisingly became the focus of attention.

The council moved quickly to reassure residents of its safety and assurances were given that no aluminium composite panels, the type believed to have contributed to the rapid spread of fire at Grenfell, were present at either the DMJ or any of the council’s other residential high rise buildings.

The council is still confident that those panels have not been used in the DMJ as they are a relatively new material used from the 1990s onwards.

However, officers cannot say with any certainty what material is actually in the panels, or whether they can withstand modern fire testing.

Labour councillor Bob Wright, within whose ward the DMJ building stands, first called for the panels to be tested just days after the Grenfell Tower fire.

“The DMJ is a very good building from a safety point of view,” said Coun Wright, who was also a fire risk assessor in a previous role.

“They’ve got protection in the central area which is safe but I wanted to ensure that inside the flats was safe too.

“I wanted to know what type of panels we have on the building. I’ve been chasing for ages for a response but every time I asked I was put off. Normally all you would do is take the outside cover off and look inside. What’s so difficult about that?”

The Advertiser understands that the testing was due to be carried out by consultants working on an options appraisal ahead of major planned refurbishments. But the work was never done and now specialist contractors have been called in.

At a meeting of the cabinet on Wednesday, it transpired that a likely source of the delay is the presence of asbestos inside the panels meaning that the task of removing them becomes more delicate.

Coun Wright said: “Asbestos panels vibrate and over time small particles come off,. I’ve suggested that they do a health check on people in the building to check for claims of asbestosis.”

A spokesman for Swindon Borough Council said: “The council does not have any aluminium composite material panels fitted to its high-rise blocks of flats. The curtain walling at the DMJ is a totally different system to the ACM panels that are considered to be a contributory factor in the rapid spread of fire at the Grenfell Tower block.

“The curtain walling at the DMJ is part of the original construction, which was built around 1975 when ACM didn’t exist, but like the majority of buildings at this time it does contain asbestos materials. These were used to provide fire breaks and are perfectly safe unless they are disturbed without proper control measures.

“We do not have any concerns at all about asbestos in the DMJ. Work is already underway to examine the curtain walling in greater detail as part of an options appraisal of the building, but there is no reason to suspect that this is an issue.

“There has been a delay in opening up the fabric of the DMJ, but we are now using a specialist contractor to carry out this work. Our own asbestos team will be on hand to ensure this work is carried out to the highest standards and as safely as possible.

“We will test an aluminium panel when it is removed, purely as a precautionary measure, to be absolutely sure that it doesn’t contain any plastic material.”