Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab) [V]]

Three and a half years ago, 72 people lost their lives in the horrors of Grenfell Tower, and many hundreds more survivors were injured and traumatised. We must never forget them.

The aftermath of that terrible event revealed the country-wide scandal of developers ignoring building safety and creating homes that are firetraps. The Government have not collected reliable figures, but the Opposition have estimated that 450,000 people are still living in blocks known to have unsafe cladding. This is not just about ACM cladding, but other dangerous cladding, as well as flammable insulation, cavity walls without fire breakers, flammable timber balconies, inadequate fire doors—the list goes on as the costs go up. Repairs are conservatively estimated at £18 billion, which puts the £1.6 billion promised by the Government into its proper perspective. Some of the defects to be remedied do not fall within the Government’s promise of support. What the Government are offering is too little, too late, and the money has not yet been handed over to leaseholders. They need help, and they need it now.

The discovery of the cladding scandal has been followed by Government dither and delay when it comes to helping leaseholders, many of whom feel they have simply been abandoned to their fate, and whose bills are going up now. None of them is to blame for this scandal, yet they are already footing escalating bills that they cannot afford. They are ordinary people simply trying to get a home of their own, or flat owners seeking to let out a flat, suddenly finding themselves in a nightmare of unaffordable costs with no way out. They live in unsafe, unmortgageable, unsellable flats, with escalating insurance costs and skyrocketing service charges to fund expensive waking watch patrols, and they are liable to pay for all the remediation. If a consumer bought a faulty kettle, they would be entitled to get their money back, but there is no consumer protection for leaseholders, just a bigger bill. It is not good enough.

The Government must prioritise helping leaseholders with these unaffordable costs as soon as possible. The developers and rule dodgers who installed this dangerous cladding and flammable insulation—who ignored fire regulations in their development—should pay, not the blameless leaseholders. It is not as if some of these people do not have the money. Last July, the Chancellor of the Exchequer provided a £4 billion tax cut to the housing and development sector by cutting stamp duty. The Help to Buy scheme has given a huge cash boost to them, so much so that developers between them have made £15 billion in profit since the Grenfell fire, so the Government must take action to extract the costs of remediation from those who perpetrated this outrage and must not make the blameless pay. I commend and support the motion today.