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The exclusion of buildings undergoing cladding replacement from government funding has been branded “arbitrary, irrational and conspicuously unfair” in a judicial review brought by residents facing bills of up to £27,000 each to make their homes safe.
The Skyline Central building in Manchester hit the headlines in May after it emerged that residents would not be able to apply for funding via the government’s £1bn Building Safety Fund to remove the building’s dangerous high-pressure laminate cladding.
This was because they had already reluctantly agreed to sign up to loan deals with freeholder Adriatic Land to pay for the work – amid fears that they might lose their homes if they did not.
They are now challenging their exclusion from the fund, which limits applications to those where work had not started by 11 March, and submitted judicial review papers to the High Court on Friday.
The case is in the name of Nathan Prescott, one of 98 leaseholders in the building, who purchased a leasehold on his flat in December 2015.
In July last year, leaseholders were informed by Adriatic that they would have to cover the £2.19m cost of the cladding replacement work – resulting in service charge bills ranging from £17,000 to £27,000.
It offered a payment plan spread over five years, which in Mr Prescott’s case will comprise 60 monthly payments of £309.28.
The block, constructed in 2006, is out of warranty, no insurance claim can be made and the original developer West Properties (UK) has gone bust – meaning there is no prospect of funding the works through another route.
The claim said that residents were therefore left in the “invidious position” of taking the loans or facing forfeiture proceedings by Adriatic, resulting in them signing up to the loans and works beginning before the 11 March cut off.
The claim emphasises that ministers have repeatedly insisted private building owners should “do the right thing” and not pass on costs. It also notes that previous funding – which covered aluminium composite material (ACM) – contained a provision to reimburse leaseholders who had already paid.
The £1bn Building Safety Fund offers government grant to remediate an estimated 1,700 buildings with dangerous cladding systems which are not ACM, the material used on Grenfell Tower.
The government has accepted that it will not cover the full cost of the work and is targeting projects which can have a contractor onsite by March next year, in order to fund the highest number of projects as quickly as possible.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “We don’t comment on ongoing legal cases.”