With more than 90% of flats identified as needing remediation still unsafe, End Our Cladding Scandal’s Giles Grover reflects on the ongoing challenges for leaseholders.
Seventy-two lives were lost in the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, and we know now from evidence at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that the warning signs of the building safety crisis had been ignored for decades. It was only in the aftermath of that tragedy that the truth slowly emerged about the scale of the crisis and how many other people were affected across the country. It was not just about external cladding defects, not just tower blocks, and not just social housing – it was much more widespread.
What we didn’t know then was how many years it would take to put things right. It seems wholly uncontentious to say that everyone deserves to live in a safe home where they can take care of their family and make plans for their future; a safe home is the foundation for building a life in which we can all fulfil our potential. The scale of the horror that unfolded at Grenfell should also have been more than enough to act with urgency to make homes safe.
Yet despite the oft-repeated and well-meaning refrains of “never again” from politicians, at the end of 2023, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in unsafe and unsellable flats. While there has been a necessary focus on improving standards for the future, there has been too little action, at the scale needed, to make existing homes safe.
In 2022, the government estimated that there were 10,000 unsafe buildings across the country requiring remediation of cladding and other building safety defects. Their latest data shows that work has only been completed on 703 of those buildings to date. That’s only 7% of buildings fixed, six-and-a-half years into this crisis. And only 3,797 are reported to have any plan or be on a pathway towards remediation.
For those caught up in the crisis long term, whose lives have already been on hold for too many years, there is a need to keep hopeful about achieving change. But it is also really important to campaigners that the reality of how much work is left to do is not covered up by over-optimistic headlines. Clearly, there is still a very long way to go until most leaseholders and residents can get their lives back – so we need all stakeholders to be urgently focused on that goal and accelerating the pace.
Partial and piecemeal solutions
When leaseholders bought their homes, they were meant to be safe – but despite almost every stakeholder agreeing that leaseholders should not pay for the faults of others, for the first five years after Grenfell, in reality that was exactly who was left to pick up the bill (and some leaseholders still are).
Since the resident-led End Our Cladding Scandal campaign was launched in 2019 by volunteers who are personally affected by the building safety scandal, there has been some partial success as the government has announced a total of £5.1 billion of funding – through the ACM Cladding Remediation Fund, Building Safety Fund (BSF), and the Cladding Safety Scheme (CSS). However, only a fraction of that money has been spent to date. The cost to the government will also be largely offset by a new tax on development and the VAT income from an estimated £15–20 billion of remediation projects.
While government funding has of course been very welcome, it has also focused narrowly on cladding remediation – but buildings cannot be made half-safe. A truly holistic approach must give equal consideration to non-cladding defects that require remediation, such as internal compartmentation defects that allow fire to spread rapidly. The building safety crisis goes far beyond external cladding and so must funding solutions.
Equally, it has long been clear that the scale of government funding would not be nearly enough to solve the crisis. Two years ago, Michael Gove announced a “reset” of the government’s approach to the building safety crisis, declaring that it would “protect leaseholders and make industry pay.” At the time of writing, 54 developers have now signed the government’s Developer Remediation Contract, committing to self-remediation of “life-critical” fire safety defects in buildings they developed or refurbished over a thirty-year period, or to reimbursing government funding schemes for buildings where the work is already underway.
End Our Cladding Scandal has been meeting with several participant developers in the scheme, and will continue to do so in the coming months, to ensure they remain focused on remediating homes at pace. Developers are typically commissioning new risk assessments before deciding what work they will undertake, if any. It would be in their financial interest for the scope of work to be reduced or for no work to be deemed required at all, therefore it is also vital that there are mechanisms to ensure corners are not being cut and that the voices of leaseholders and residents aren’t ignored a second time around.
As Michael Gove recently noted on X (formerly Twitter), campaigners will be sharing our feedback with the Secretary of State and his Department, including any examples of companies that are delaying making homes safe or where there are any other significant concerns for leaseholders and residents. We will also be raising the many industry-wide issues that are affecting the pace of remediation – where we believe the Department of Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities (DLUHC) must take a more active role to ensure progress.
It is welcome progress that the participant developers will be contributing to remediation funding – but realistically, this only covers an estimated 10–15% of all defective buildings (currently 1,342 buildings, according to the latest DLUHC data). It is down to pure luck whether you bought a home developed by an SME developer that has not yet been asked to self-remediate their buildings, or one that chose to dissolve immediately after construction – which has happened all too frequently. In these buildings, there is no pathway for non-cladding defects to ever be fixed because this is outside the scope of government remediation schemes. We want to see consistent policy to protect all leaseholders, not a game of chance.
It’s also clear that a wider array of stakeholders and responsible parties have not yet stepped up to play their part in contributing to the cost of remediating hundreds of thousands of unsafe homes that were allowed to be built and sold for decades. Some building owners, who seek income from our homes for no discernible service in return, continue to block access for remediation work and delay homes from being made safe. Evidence at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has also shown there were a wide pool of parties with responsibility that, in our opinion, were not so slow to take profit and earnings from our defective homes – from product manufacturers to contractors, architects, building control, warranty providers, and others. If the government wants all homes to be made safe, there must be more funding available and more responsible parties must be brought to the table.
The fact that the wider industry has not been made to contribute, means that leaseholders are still footing the bill – even those that are deemed “qualifying” for protection could face bills of up to £10,000 or up to £15,000 in Greater London, in addition to exorbitant insurance costs and loss of property value if they need to sell before remediation is complete. These costs remain unjust and life-changing.
Protecting leaseholders
All leaseholders are equally blameless in the building safety crisis and equally deserving of protection from the costs of fixing historic safety defects. However, when the “leaseholder protections” were introduced in the Building Safety Act – which cap maximum costs and ensure that only one tenth of the cap can be charged in a single year – an arbitrary line was drawn to exclude anyone who owned, or had any interest in, more than three residential properties in the UK.
As a result, many thousands of “non-qualifying” leaseholders face entirely uncapped costs for non-cladding defects, through no fault of their own. In addition, most mortgage lenders will not lend on these properties – so they cannot sell even if they wanted to, and may face enormous bills with only 28 days to pay. There are an estimated 400,000 flats in mid- or high-rise buildings that are owned by a non-qualifying leaseholder, so this is not a small problem – and it has a ripple effect. In any building that has even one non-qualifying leaseholder who cannot pay, remediation work to make homes safe may be delayed or unable to go ahead.
No matter how high risk they are, buildings under 11 metres are also entirely ruled out of support from government funding schemes, developer remediation, and the leaseholder protections. These leaseholders have been left to fend for themselves, with the only alternative being expensive and time-consuming legal action. In 2023, Michael Gove acknowledged in Parliament that fire safety defects in buildings under 11 metres will “sometimes” be “life-critical”. Most buildings of this height may not require remediation – but even so, if mortgage lenders have any reason for concern about the construction, they may not lend without an EWS1 form, leaving these leaseholders trapped. And in some cases, insurers are insisting on remediation work as a condition of cover or insurance premiums have soared because the defects will not be fixed.
In our view, all remediation that is confirmed to be required by professional risk assessments must be equally eligible for funding, regardless of building height – otherwise, we face the prospect that some homes will never be made safe, sellable, or insurable. If only a small number of buildings under 11 metres need remediation, it doesn’t make sense to exclude them from support, as this has a negative ripple effect on the market for all buildings of this height. A simple, comprehensive solution is needed that will fully protect all blameless leaseholders and residents.
Next steps
In recent months, there was very clear cross-party support in the House of Lords for amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill which would have increased protections for non-qualifying leaseholders, led by Lord Young of Cookham, the Conservative former housing minister, with support from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Although these amendments were rejected by the government, campaigners are now expecting Ministers to bring forward their own amendments in the upcoming Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which has promised to “Build on the legislation brought forward by the Building Safety Act 2022, ensuring freeholders and developers are unable to escape their liabilities to fund building remediation work – protecting leaseholders by extending the measures in the Building Safety Act 2022 to ensure it operates as intended.”
It is also expected that opposition parties will use this opportunity to push for greater support for all leaseholders caught up in the building safety scandal. The Labour Party’s current policy position includes a commitment to “Act over historic injustices” and confirms the party’s view that “Leaseholders should be protected from the costs of remediating cladding and non-cladding defects, in all buildings and irrespective of circumstance.”
Ahead of the general election expected in 2024, End Our Cladding Scandal has published a manifesto setting out a comprehensive five point plan and will be seeking the decisive commitment of all political parties that want to win the votes of millions of affected leaseholders and their families. Whatever form the next government takes, it must do much more to get a firm grip of the building safety crisis and finally end this nightmare for leaseholders and residents across the country. It is the bare minimum that they deserve.
The current government has one final chance to make good on the promises it has made over years – now is their time to grasp this nettle. Housing Secretaries and Ministers will come and go (we’ve dealt with four since 2019) – but we will still be here campaigning until this crisis is fixed, for good.
Find out more about End Our Cladding Scandal’s campaign work here.
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Giles Grover is End Our Cladding Scandal’s Co-Lead.