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G15 landlord offers interest-free credit for leaseholder fire safety bills
Network Homes will offer leaseholders hit by fire safety remediation bills interest-free loans to pay for costs, it has announced.
The 20,000-home landlord, which belongs to the G15 group of London’s 12 biggest housing associations, said that it may be legally obliged to make leaseholders foot the bill for remediation costs which could be “substantially more” than annual service charges.
The association said: “To help support leaseholders and shared owners manage their payments, we have obtained a licence from the Financial Conduct Authority to enable us to offer an interest-free credit option arrangement to those affected. We’ll also be able to offer free debt advice.
“We’re still in the process of setting this service up, which should be up and running in early 2021. We’ll be providing further details of leaseholders and shared owners in the coming weeks.”
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It comes as leaseholders across the country have been told they will have to pay bills, often totalling tens of thousands of pounds, to fix fire safety defects including dangerous cladding on their buildings.
So far the government has set aside a £400m fund to remove Grenfell-style aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding from social homes and £200m to remove it from private properties.
A further £1bn Building Safety Fund was announced at the Spring Budget last year for the removal of non-ACM cladding from buildings taller than 18m across the country.
But the government has estimated this fund may only cover around 600 buildings, despite there being roughly 1,800 buildings over 18m metres with non-ACM cladding in England, leaving leaseholders with the prospect of paying for cladding removal.
A spokesperson for Network said: "There are systemic national issues that have caused problems of building safety and I don’t believe that Network Homes residents should be paying the price for putting them right. We will exhaust all possible avenues to recover funding by vigorously pursuing any organisation with potential liability for failings – this will protect the public purse, our charitable funds and leaseholders.
"Failing that, and in the absence of government funding, we will have no choice but to consider recovery from leaseholders – in line with legal obligations in their lease. If it came to that our FCA licence enables us to offer interest-free credit which might make the cost more manageable. We will use all possible means to lobby government to make broad funding available to protect leaseholders from these costs.
