Envy Apartment

A resident of a Bristol apartment block revealed to have Grenfell Tower-style cladding has urged the building's owners to replace it. Philip Hoang, 57, who has lived in the Eclipse building at Cabot Circus for three years, had not heard from property managers about the fire safety risk before being alerted to the problem by the Bristol Post . "I feel scared," said Mr Hoang. "I can quite easily see a fire happening here, and there is no way we would survive it. "It’s such a nice building, but obviously if it’s similar material then they have to take it off and renew it - nothing else will work." Avon Fire and Rescue Service confirmed today that the landmark tower block , which stands above the city's Harvey Nichols department store , used similar materials to those which were blamed for spreading the devastating blaze at Grenfell Tower in London, which claimed the lives of at least 80 people. Three beaches closed after broken pipe leaks sewage ...

The long retail spine of Sydney Road, Brunswick, just north of Melbourne's CBD, was once a prosperous trading outpost on the way to the goldfields. These days it's a bohemian mix of variety stores, op shops, halal butchers and Lebanese bakeries. Take a side street to the west, however, and a different picture emerges. Sandwiched between Sydney Road and the Upfield train line is an area undergoing rapid and widespread transformation. Light industry is fast being replaced by mid- rise apartment buildings , their inhabitants attracted by the short commute into town and cheaper prices than in the city's south-east. The quality of these units is, on the whole, depressingly bad; think poor ventilation and bedrooms that "borrow" natural light (a weasel word for being dark and windowless). The occasional jazzy façade tries feebly to make up for otherwise cheap construction amid a chorus of greys. At ground level, carpark roller doors alternate with mean pocket garden...