Cladding: Developers told to act on lower-height buildings

The housing minister has said he will be “absolutely willing to use legal rules” to make builders pay for the removal of unsafe cladding from lower-height buildings.

Michael Gove has written to firms, giving them until March to agree a plan to protect leaseholders trapped in “unsellable homes”.

So far, residents in blocks 11-18m high have been ineligible for government support to remove unsafe cladding.

It has left many with crippling bills.

Mr Gove said some companies had shown leadership and covered the costs but others “had not shouldered their responsibilities.”

“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,” he said in a letter to developers in England and Wales.

“For too many of the people living in properties your industry has built in recent years, their home has become a source of misery.”

The minister is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons later on Monday.

In the wake of the Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people in 2017, flammable cladding and other fire safety defects were discovered in hundreds of blocks of flats across the UK.

The government has so far only promised to pay to remove cladding in taller buildings, not those between 11m and 18m high.

Removing cladding can cost millions of pounds per block, with the cost often being borne by individual flat owners, under the leasehold system in England and Wales.

In his letter, Mr Gove warned he would take “all steps necessary” to make developers pay, including restricting access to government funding and future procurements.

He also said he would be willing to use planning powers and, if the industry failed to take responsibility, ultimately “impose a solution in law”.

The time limit for leaseholders to sue builders over defective flats will also be extended from 6 to 30 years.

Mr Gove told the BBC: “It is the case that companies that have significant turnover, significant profits, significant dividends going out, they can pay and we will make sure that they will.”

Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey said that it had made sure its customers would not have to pay for improvements after it announced “significant funding” last March to undertake fire safety works.

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, said that the “most urgent action” remains for government to “define guidance” and work with lenders, insurers, surveyors and the construction industry to understand what remediation work “actually needs to be done”.

As well as developers and government, Mr Baseley said that other parties should be involved, “not least material manufacturers who designed, tested and sold materials that developers purchased in good faith that were later proved to not be fit for purpose”.

Charlotte Meehan lives with her husband in an East London development that has a range of fire safety issues, including flammable cladding, combustible insulation and missing cavity barriers.

She told the BBC she wanted to move to start a family, but it was impossible: “We are completely trapped, we can’t sell our flat it’s worthless.”

Leaseholders have had to pay £500,000 over the last two years for a 24-hour waking watch, resulting in their service charge doubling.

The development’s reserves for essential repairs are also “seriously depleted” leaving it in a “dire state of disrepair”.

She welcomed Mr Gove’s plans but said it felt “half baked” as it did not cover non-cladding fires safety issues or interim costs.

“People are going bankrupt and losing their homes based on interim costs,” she said.

The government says the vast majority of lower height buildings are safe and others that do have combustible cladding may also be safe or could be made safe using existing fire safety measures.

However, it said a small number have unsafe cladding that must be addressed.

Cladding campaigners have long asked that the government accept both the principle that buildings under 18.5m ought to be covered and that leaseholders should not have to pay.

They cautiously welcomed the government’s new proposals, but warned they ignored the costs of fixing other fire safety issues discovered on thousands of tower blocks across UK.

There is also no help for the many buildings under 11m high with dangerous cladding.

Do you live in a property with unsafe cladding? How have you been affected? Get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

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