Angela Rayner described efforts to remove unsafe cladding from thousands of vulnerable buildings as “too slow” and said it was her job to ensure the remaining work was completed as quickly as possible.

The Deputy Prime Minister made the comments on Tuesday afternoon during a visit to Dagenham, east London, a day after a devastating fire broke out in a block of flats where remedial work was being carried out to remove “non-compliant” cladding.

More than 100 people were evacuated from the eight-storey building and two were taken to hospital. On Monday afternoon, the London Fire Brigade (LFB) announced that the fire was under control and all residents had been rescued.

The incident occurred a week before the publication of the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry and raised questions about the slow pace of remedial work on unsafe buildings since the tragedy in 2017.

At a meeting with residents, Rayner told reporters: “We have identified 4,630 buildings that have the cladding on them. Over 50% of those have already started remediation work. This was one of the buildings that started it, but I think it’s too slow. We need to hurry.”

Rayner said the incident must have been “incredibly triggering” for the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire.

“They have fought for seven years to get these changes made and now it is my job to make sure that happens as quickly as possible. We cannot carry on like this for another seven years. We need to do this very quickly because this is about people’s homes and people deserve to feel safe in their own homes,” she said.

Rayner called for safety work to be accelerated after Dame Judith Hackitt, who led an inquiry into building safety following the Grenfell Tower fire, said the government must “increase the pace of remediation and hold those responsible to account”.

Commenting on the general housing crisis, Rayner said: “There is a shortage of housing and we have not built enough. But we also need to make sure that these homes are built in a way that is people-friendly and that we remember that these are places where people live and raise their families.”

“These are not assets that people can sweat and make money off of. These are actually places where people need to live, and the most important thing for me is that people need to feel safe.”

According to the LFB, Dagenham Tower had known fire safety issues. The i newspaper reported that it was formerly an office building that had been converted into apartments.

London Fire Brigade Chief Andy Roe said investigating the fire had been difficult because parts of the building had been declared “inaccessible”, meaning investigators and specialists “will likely be on site for several days”.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) said the blaze exposed the “national scandal” surrounding combustible cladding and deregulation in the construction industry, adding that the block was subject to a fire safety order in 2023.

About an hour after the fire in Dagenham was brought under control, another fire broke out in nearby Poplar. Firefighters were called to the 44-storey Charrington Tower in the New Providence Wharf residential complex at 1.28pm. The fire was under control by 2.50pm.

While this particular block has an EWS1 certificate proving the non-combustibility of its wall materials, another block on the same estate was ordered to have its Grenfell-style cladding removed after a fire in 2021 trapped residents in their homes.