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Jenrick must speak to affected residents if he wants to solve the cladding crisis
Robert Jenrick’s latest announcement on building safety was a step in the right direction but remains too little to really solve the crisis. If he wants to succeed, he must talk to the affected residents, writes Peter Apps
There is good and bad in the latest big announcement from government on the building safety crisis.
First, the good. The increased pace in establishing a building safety regulator is to be welcomed. In Victoria, Australia, where the post-Grenfell response has been far more thorough and coherent, the existence of such a regulator has been key. Speeding up the timetable for its introduction here is a welcome acknowledgement of the urgency of the issue.
Similarly, the move to focus on buildings below the 18m cut-off is both practically and symbolically important.
It is practically important because there are many at-risk buildings that require attention below this line, as the fires of 2019 proved. Mr Jenrick was right to emphasise the need to make these buildings safe, especially if they have the same cladding as Grenfell. Lowering the combustibles ban and sprinkler threshold to 11m was clearly correct as well. The alternative would have been a new generation of unsafe buildings that are 17.9m tall, as developers sought to circumvent the requirements.
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It is symbolically important because the previous adherence to the binary 18m line represented a frustrating refusal to accept that the old way may have been wrong. Moving away from it shows that the housing secretary has a genuine intention to be a new broom in the department.
But there is bad, too. Nothing announced on Monday will make the big impact necessary to really start turning the dial on this crisis.
“Mr Jenrick wore a green badge to commemorate the victims of Grenfell in parliament on Monday. A better commemoration would be action”
The promise to name and shame building owners who are not removing cladding shows a misunderstanding of the issue – they are often freehold companies with little trading reputation. A robust plan to force them into action is desperately required. This is not it.
Whether the Treasury likes it or not, a true solution will also require more public money. The bill for this systemic, national failure cannot be met by social landlords and leaseholders alone.
Perhaps related to this is the biggest failure in Mr Jenrick’s approach: his ongoing refusal to directly engage with the residents who are at the sharpest end of the cladding crisis.
Meeting them would not only open his eyes to the urgency of the issue, it may also make the solutions clearer. They are living the crisis and will have the most immediate insight into what would solve it and what wouldn’t.
Not engaging with them carries echoes of the worst top-down attitude that politicians promised to move away from in the aftermath of Grenfell.
Mr Jenrick wore a green badge to commemorate the victims of that fire in parliament on Monday. A better commemoration would be action.
Peter Apps, deputy editor, Inside Housing
