WALTHAM FOREST Council said that with potential changes coming with the Building Safety and Fire Safety Bills, tenants and leaseholders would be charged if funding bids for works are unsuccessful.
Guardian Series reported on the London borough council’s meeting, in which it said that funding needed to keep council homes ‘safe from fires’ would be raised by charging ‘tenants and leaseholders’ if the council’s bid for funding for works does not succeed. With the Building Safety Bill and Fire Safety Bill expected to come into force in 2022, buildings ‘of six or more storeys’ will see a greater focus, with the council owning 13 buildings of that height or above.
These buildings, it said ‘will definitely be affected’ by the new laws, and so it is commissioning reports on another 98 smaller buildings, with the cost of bringing all council housing ‘up to date with the new laws’ is expected to reach about £38m, and ‘it is not known how much of this may be charged to tenants and leaseholders’.
A meeting of the council’s housing scrutiny committee saw director of housing assets Sumitra Gomer state that it is ‘trying to apply’ for government funding to cover the costs, but if it is unsuccessful in bidding for the ‘heavily oversubscribed’ fund, then funding will ‘come both from tenants and from leaseholders’. Waltham Forest Council is one of only seven councils that have sought government funding for replacing ‘external cladding that has been identified as non-compliant’.
The council confirmed at the meeting that no building in the borough ‘currently has’ combustible aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding as used on Grenfell Tower, with Conservative councillor John Moss stating it would be ‘perfectly reasonable’ if the government did not provide funding, because the council has ‘a lot of taxpayers’ money’ from tenants’ rents.
The news outlet added that it ‘is not known when’ the council’s bid for funding will be confirmed or rejected, but work on the affected buildings ‘will be carried out over the next three years’, with four buildings owned by housing associations in the borough having had ACM removed and replaced, while another building is seeing work ‘ongoing’ to replace cladding in Walthamstow.