BORIS JOHNSON ‘slammed’ mortgage lenders for use of the external wall survey (EWS1) form, but ‘failed to promise that leaseholders would not have to pay for cladding removal’.
Mortgage Solutions reported on the comments from the Prime Minister in parliament in response to a question from Labour MP Rupa Huq, who asked: ‘When 72 Londoners burned to death at Grenfell because of a cladding defect we all said never again, but for hundreds of thousands the living nightmare of waking watch and the non-existent EWS1 form continues. So will the prime minister commit that no leaseholder anywhere should foot the bill for what’s no fault of their own?’
In response, Mr Johnson said of Ms Huq: ‘She’s right to call attention to the difficulties that many people are facing because of the EWS1 form and I sympathise very much with them. Mortgage companies should realise they [EWS1 forms] are not necessary for buildings under 18m and it’s absolutely vital they understand that while we get on with the work of removing cladding from all the buildings we can, and that’s what this government is continuing to do.’
The news outlet pointed out however that this put him ‘at odds’ with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which had announced this week that flat owners in buildings without cladding ‘will no longer need’ EWS1 forms to sell or remortgage properties. It also noted that he ‘failed to promise that leaseholders would not have to pay for cladding removal’, which ‘could put him into conflict with large numbers of Conservative backbenchers’.
His fellow MPs are ‘potentially prepared to rebel to support such a move’, Mortgage Solutions added Earlier this week, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee (HCLGC) called attention to clauses in the draft Building Safety Bill that might allow leaseholders to be charged for fire safety works, an ‘abdication of responsibility’.
The committee called on the government to ‘recommit to the principle’ that leaseholders should not pay towards the remediation of their buildings. It was ‘deeply concerned’ by the government’s ‘failure to protect’ leaseholders from ‘historic’ building safety costs’, and added that it was ‘especially disturbed by its commitment to protecting [them] from only “unaffordable costs”’.
Such a move ‘would be unacceptable and an abdication of responsibility’, in making leaseholders ‘contribute a single penny towards the cost of remediating defects for which they were not responsible’. The bill proposes a building safety charge separate from service charges, which is ‘aimed to ensure that the building safety costs are clearly identifiable’.
However, despite ‘growing campaigns’ that call for leaseholders to be protected from such costs, clauses in the bill ‘permit’ building managers and owners to charge leaseholders ‘for these costs, even for issues that pre-date them moving in’. The HCLGC report listed individuals and groups that had said ‘they did not think any costs should be pushed onto leaseholders’, including the Health and Safety Executive.
For the committee, ‘quite simply, no one besides the government thinks the leaseholders should pay’, and it was ‘evident that the responsibility for the costs of remediation lay jointly between the industry and the government’. It recommended that ‘the only way to ensure’ such work was ‘done quickly’ was for the government to ‘forward fund’ it and ‘then pursue recouping the costs’, with cladding funding so far ‘not enough’.
Housing Minister Lord Greenhalgh had told MPs last month that leaseholders would be liable for ‘some costs’ where owners would not pay ‘and were not required to do so’ under lease terms, adding that the government was ‘determined to ensure the sums involved were fair and affordable’.
The committee argued that the government, while also footing bills ‘in the short term’, needed to ‘develop mechanisms’ to recover costs from those responsible for ‘historic failures’. It also warned that there was a risk that freeholders might seek to recover costs of historic remedial work ‘through the building safety charge’, and criticised the ‘lack of detail in key areas’ of the draft bill.
Two Conservative MPs wrote to all other government MPs who are not ministers to ‘take a stand’ and ‘press’ the government to take action to protect leaseholders from fire safety costs, with Stephen McPartland and Royston Smith stating that ‘the government has done its best, but it has been over three years and they are not tackling all the issues.
‘There are lots of options and solutions to support the millions of leaseholders that are being left behind in our constituencies and we are working with the UK Cladding Action Group (UKCAG) to urge the government to support leaseholders’. However, comments made by Housing Minister Christopher Pincher in parliament saw him state that the government would not write an ‘open cheque’, and that it was up to developers and building owners to ‘step up’ and take responsibility.
HCLGC chairman Clive Betts said that the support provided to leaseholders so far was ‘totally inadequate’, and was supported by Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley, who said that delays to repairs had effectively ‘frozen’ parts of the leasehold market, and those affected had suffered both ‘unimaginable anxiety and costs beyond the possible chance of paying’.
Further backing for the HCLGC recommendations came from the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Greater Manchester High Rise Task Force, and Dame Judith Hackitt predicted (https://www.thefpa.co.uk/news/hackitt-predicts-revisions-to-building-safety-bill) that the government will amend the bill ‘in order to help homeowners trapped in unsafe buildings’.
In December last year, the government’s Queen’s Speech introduced the Fire Safety Bill, and in January, more details were released, before it was officially introduced in late March. In May, the bill received its second reading in parliament, before amendments were tabled in July ‘to help protect leaseholders living in homes with dangerous cladding’.
In September, the bill passed the first stage before becoming law, but Labour saw an amendment defeated that had aimed to ensure that the inquiry’s first phase recommendations were implemented. Earlier this month, Labour again put the amendment forward in the House of Lords, and it was passed.