At least 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017. About 274,000 flats are believed to have unsafe cladding, affecting about 650,000 people, according to the Association of Residential Managing Agents. As well as the anxiety of living in unsafe homes, they are unable to sell their flats.
Robert Jenrick’s action plan, announced in the Commons this week, gives grants for cladding remediation to leaseholders in residential buildings above six storeys, while those in four to six-storey building can take out a long-term, low-interest loan. From 2022, a tax will be levied on residential property development to raise £2bn in a decade.
However, the plan was immediately disparaged, with critics pointing out it denied justice to residents taking out loans, who would be left paying them off for decades for safety breaches caused by property developers, and also ignored non-cladding issues.
Tom Pemberton, construction partner at Goodman Derrick, said: ‘It will not provide any cover at all for lower-rise buildings, and it seems that it will not cover the cost of other essential work to make buildings of any height safe.
‘For example, a fire risk is often presented by faulty smoke ventilation systems and combustible insulation inside the external wall (not the external cladding). These elements need to be signed off by accredited fire safety professionals before properties become mortgageable and marketable.
‘Developers, in the meantime, will no doubt question why they are being singled out to pay the costs of the new scheme by paying a levy on their future high-rise schemes, in addition to a tax on them which the government hopes to yield £2 billion over a decade.’
Andrew Parker, construction partner at Forsters, said the announcement amounted to ‘only a token gesture towards the cladding problems.
‘There is no timescale for many of the measures and in some cases only consultation is promised. There are no retrospective measures in place for those that have been affected in the last couple of years.
‘The measures repeatedly refer to cladding only and we are left unsure of what happens in buildings with no ACM [aluminium composite material] cladding but still highly unsafe external wall systems. The money that has been pledged has not been put into any sort of context―how many buildings is it assumed that the money will fix?
‘Professional indemnity insurance is mentioned in passing but many insurers currently refuse to cover fire related cladding works―how will the all important design and construction of the remedial works receive sufficient insurance cover?’
