While the government has already agreed to protect leaseholders living in buildings over 18 metres in height, the issue of lower buildings with Grenfell-style cladding remains in the air. Residents of many buildings less than 18 metres in height remain exposed to excessive risk and leaseholders of apartments are also exposed to massive costs.
Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove has today written to the residential property developer industry giving a deadline of early March to agree a fully funded plan of action including the replacement of unsafe cladding on buildings between 11 metres and 18 metres high, at a cost currently estimated to be £4bn.
Mr Gove has said that developers must pay to fix the cladding crisis that they caused as he overhauls the government’s approach to building safety.
He has repeated previous ministerial threats that developers who refuse to pay for cladding fixes could face difficulty getting access to government funding and future procurements.
In his letter to the property industry, Mr Gove says: “It is neither fair nor decent that innocent leaseholders, many of whom have worked hard and made sacrifices to get a foot on the housing ladder, should be landed with bills they cannot afford to fix problems they did not cause.
“Government has accepted its share of responsibility and made significant financial provision through its ACM remediation programme and the Building Safety Fund. Some developers have already done the right thing and funded remedial works and I commend them for those actions. But too many others have failed to live up to their responsibilities.”
In the letter, Mr Gove asks companies to agree to:
- pay into a fund to cover the outstanding cost to remediate unsafe cladding on 11-18-metre buildings, currently estimated to be £4bn;
- fund and undertake all necessary remediation of buildings over 11 metres that they have played a role in developing;
- provide details of all buildings over 11 metres that have historic safety defects and which they have played a part in constructing in the last 30 years.
Most 11 to 18-metre buildings are safe and others that do have combustible cladding may also be safe or can be made safe with measures such as sprinklers and alarms. There are, however, a few residential buildings with unsafe cladding that need to be addressed.
The government will decide which companies are in scope for funding contributions following discussions with the industry. However it is expected that all firms with annual profits from house-building at or above £10m will be included.
The statement follows Mr Gove's decision last month to suspend Rydon Homes, sister company of the Grenfell Tower refurbishment contractor, from the government’s Help to Buy scheme, despite the official inquiry set up to determine blame having not yet concluded.
Mr Gove’s letter to the industry concludes: “For too many of the people living in properties your industry has built in recent years, their home has become a source of misery. This must change.”
Campaigners from the End Our Cladding Scandal action group said: “This may be a step in the right direction, but the devil's in the detail.”
London Cladding Action Group said that more financial aid was needed with the remediation of non-cladding items, “including wooden balconies, missing firebreaks or inadequate smoke extraction systems”.
Mary-Anne Bowring, managing director of property management consultant Ringley, commented: “Leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis living in buildings between 11 and 18 meters have long been taken for granted in the Government’s approach to fire safety remediation. The announcement today is vindication for thousands facing astronomical costs that come with replacing unsafe cladding.
“Those imprisoned by these costs still face an uphill struggle as funding will only cover cladding replacement when new legislation mandates much more substantial changes to meet fire safety compliance which come at a steep cost. We ought to also question how this funding will be secured, the accessibility of grants, and the transparency of a system which transfers responsibility from the true culprits who were largely wound down and disappeared post-Grenfell, to developers more broadly who face a blanket tax for the failure of a few.”
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