Thousands of people are living and working in six potentially flammable Melbourne high-rise towers while authorities argue with builders in court over who should fix them.
The potentially hazardous central city skyscrapers are clad in combustible aluminium sheets of the sort responsible for fuelling Melbourne's Lacrosse building fire and London's lethal Grenfell Tower blaze.
Builder LU Simon, who constructed the Lacrosse apartment tower, has mounted a legal challenge to stop authorities ordering it to fix another six multi-storey towers it erected with non-compliant cladding.
The builder - who is fighting a separate damages claim from Lacrosse's owners - sought a Supreme Court injunction to prohibit the Victorian Building Authority from giving it a "direction to fix" the towers.
At least 2500 people are estimated to live or work in the six skyscrapers.
The tallest is the 49-storey Verve 501 and Milano twin-tower complex on the corner of Swanston and Franklin streets opposite Melbourne City Baths.
It has 590 apartments and a six-level indoor climbing wall, said to be the tallest rock climbing wall in Australia.
When Fairfax Media visited the block, dozens of young students who live in the tower went in and out of the doors over a short period.
Other towers covered with non-compliant cladding include: The Aura, a 28-storey, 275-apartment tower in Flinders Street; the 36-storey Atlantis Tower and Best Western Atlantis Hotel on Spencer Street; the 21-storey Guilfoyle complex which has 353 apartments in Southbank; a 9-storey 180-unit block at 463 Docklands Drive; and the 19-storey former Qantas office at 42-56 Franklin Street.
The six buildings are just a handful of the 170 high-rise towers identified with aluminium cladding in a city-wide audit after the Lacrosse fire. Fifty-one per cent of those were non-compliant.
Thirty nine buildings are still not compliant but are safe to occupy, the authority maintains. A further audit is targeting another 112 buildings, it said.
The authority has notified multiple body corporates - the legal entities that look after strata buildings - that "authorised persons" will do on-site inspections and issue builders with orders to fix structures, court documents show.
No builders apart from LU Simon had taken steps to halt inspections, the authority said.
The court documents don't detail the costs of fixing the towers, but one of the authority's executives has previously said the national figure could reach billions of dollars.
"Recently, the VBA asked building practitioners - including LU Simon, who had not made satisfactory progress in achieving compliance - to provide an enforceable undertaking to provide an agreed pathway to bring these buildings into compliance," the authority's chief executive Prue Digby told Fairfax Media.
LU Simon said in a court affidavit it had worked with the authority to resolve concerns about the buildings "without any admission of any wrongdoing."
In each of the six cases a building permit was no longer in force and surveyors had issued occupancy permits.
The "authorised person" did not have power to issue a fix order, LU Simon argues.
Lucas Hanger, a resident at 463 Docklands Drive, said following the Lacrosse Tower fire he was worried about cladding on his building.
"I would be very concerned not only for myself but for a high majority of the other residents as well," he said.
Mr Hanger said he would stay on in the building despite concerns about the cladding for financial reasons and because he felt safe on the first level close to the ground floor.
Efforts to ban aluminium composite cladding in Australia have failed, but a compromise between state and federal building ministers earlier this month - three years after the Lacrosse fire - means the cladding will no longer be used on residential towers.
Complex building regulations and weak industry oversight have made the task of assigning responsibility and liability for rectification and costs difficult.
Multiple other architects, builders, building surveyors and insurers are also trying to ascertain their exposure to the problem.
The LU Simon matter was listed for a directions hearing on November 2.
