MORE CONSERVATIVE MPs are backing two of their MPs’ amendment to ensure leaseholders ‘do not have to pay for fire safety work’.
Earlier this week, Labour brought forward a vote and a list of proposals to parliament that aimed to protect leaseholders from paying for fire safety works – including remediating cladding. It called for the creation of a national cladding taskforce to oversee remediation work, which had been ‘successfully applied’ in Victoria, Australia and ‘led the effort to identify, prioritise and remediate’ combustible cladding, while England’s ‘decentralised approach means we still do not even have a comprehensive figure for the number of buildings affected’.
The party’s six demands included ‘immediate up-front funding for removing’ cladding as well as ‘other urgent fire safety work’; protection of leaseholders and taxpayers ‘by pursuing those responsible for the cladding scandal for costs’; and a ‘new, legally enforceable 2022 deadline to make homes safe’.
Other demands consisted of legislation ‘to protect residents from costs’; ‘getting the market moving’ by ensuring those affected can sell and remortgage homes; and ‘stamping out rogue builders’ via reform of the sector. The symbolic vote was accompanied by an amendment to the Fire Safety Bill ‘seeking to achieve the same result when that legislation returns’.
Labour also published analysis from the New Build Database and the Office for National Statistics that suggested 11m people might be affected by the cladding crisis, or ‘one in every five people in England’ in up to 4.6m properties housing an average of 2.4 residents each. A cross party debate then took place that saw Conservative MPs join Labour and other parties in ‘urging the government to act’.
Conservative politicians warned their own party that ‘not enough was being done’ to help leaseholders, and while developers and manufacturers ‘should be pursued for costs’, they also urged the government to ‘step in immediately to prevent more people being presented with unaffordable bills’.
The vote saw the Conservatives ordered to abstain, with remaining MPs voting 263 to 0 to support the ‘non-binding motion’. Over 30 Conservative MPs had at that point signed an amendment to the Fire Safety Bill which would ‘bar building freeholders from passing the costs of removing cladding or other fire safety work on to leaseholders’. Conservative MP Royston Smith, who co led the amendment, added: ‘Leaseholders bought their homes in good faith.
‘They would have trusted the developer to build a safe home, and they would have trusted the government to ensure that it conformed to the law. Today I’m asking the government to accept our amendment and, once and for all, tell the leaseholders it’s not their fault and they will not have to pay.’
His fellow Conservative MP and co leader of the amendment, Stephen McPartland, added that he ‘could not accept’ the loans proposal, as ‘having such debt on a property like that is not affordable’. Both were disappointed that Labour had ‘not simply supported’ their own amendment ‘which would then be close to a Commons majority’, though Labour said it would back it in a vote.
In response, Housing Minister Christopher Pincher said that an announcement would come ‘very shortly’, but the issue was ‘complex and involved many factors […] there is no quick fix; if there was then we’d have done it long ago’. A series of Conservative MPs told him that the funding released so far ‘would not be enough’, and that action ‘was needed rapidly’.
HCLGC chair Clive Betts, while agreeing that it was ‘right’ to pursue companies that were involved in fitting combustible cladding for costs, ‘this would take time’ and some ‘had gone out of business’, so the government ‘must commit the money’ and could ‘recoup’ it via the levy proposal. Huffington Post has now reported that Mr McPartland and Mr Smith’s amendment now has the backing of 38 Conservative MPs, meaning the government ‘is facing potential defeat’ on the issue.
Mr McPartland said that campaigners were making ‘huge progress’ towards ensuring leaseholders do not have to pay to ‘fix historic fire defects’, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson having ‘suggested he agreed’ in parliament, insisting that leaseholders ‘should not have to worry about the cost’ of fixing fire risks.
Mr Pincher had asked Mr McPartland to ‘withdraw’ the amendment because the government will ‘very shortly’ announce a financial situation, but Mr McPartland refused, and ‘made clear that any proposal involving loans for leaseholders would be unacceptable as it would see many effectively losing money through building up debt on their properties’.
The scale of the rebellion means that if two more MPs back the amendment to the Fire Safety Bill, it would pass. Mr McPartland said, when asked if Mr Pincher had offered enough: ‘Absolutely not. The housing minister asked us to drop our amendment because they’re frightened. And we now have 38 Conservative colleagues signed up to the amendment, so we’re making huge progress and we’re going to continue doing that.’
He accused Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick of ‘incompetence’, and suggested Mr Pincher ‘doesn’t seem to have a grip of the issue […] it’s almost like he doesn’t actually fully understand it’, citing the change of advice at the start of 2020 ‘meaning buildings of all heights became embroiled’ in the crisis – rather than just those over six storeys – as being ‘part of the problem. This meant 100,000 buildings – up from 1,700 – became affected, comprising over 4m flats.
Mr McPartland also noted that campaigners estimate between £20bn and £40bn is required to fix the crisis, because ‘even second-storey flats with wooden balconies are subject to the advice’, and he suggested changing the guidance to exclude properties on lower storeys, without including materials like wood and making more ‘risk based assessment[s]’ of individual blocks.
He added: ‘I think one of the things that people are missing is that a lot of people are trapped in a position where they cannot sell these properties. When we hear about [...] loans, I made it very clear in PMQs [prime minister’s questions] on Wednesday that I would not support loans to leaseholders.’
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