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The government has made no commitment to help leaseholders set to be hit with a £3m bill to remove dangerous cladding, but continues to say it will “not rule anything out”.
Vallea Court and Cypress Place, which are comprised of 345 flats, were last July found to have category 3 aluminium composite material cladding (ACM) – almost identical to that used on Grenfell Tower.
The buildings are understood to be insulated with Kingspan’s Kooltherm K15 – a popular form of combustible insulation.
A tribunal this week said leaseholders will be expected to foot the £3m removal bill for the dangerous material – plus the freeholder’s legal fees and the cost of a waking watch.
The flats were developed by Lendlease before being sold to Pemberstone, a property investor. The building work was carried out by Shepherds Construction on a ‘design-and-build’ contract.
Asked whether the government would step in to help the affected leaseholders, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “There is a moral imperative for private sector landlords to do the right thing and foot the bill for removing unsafe cladding, and not leave leaseholders to cover the cost.
“A number of leading developers in the private sector have stepped up to the mark and agreed to do the same, and we urge others to follow their lead. If they don’t, we have not ruled anything out.”
A spokesperson for the residents’ group said: “It’s time now for Lendlease to step up and follow government advice and other considerate contractors such as Mace and Barratt and put this right at no cost to leaseholders.
“We need action, not words from the government to help enforce this. A large number of leaseholders bought their flats as first-time buyers under Help to Buy scheme. We are not rich investors and we have no idea how we will pay these bills. We face financial ruin and the anguish is unbearable.”
The government has committed £400m to fund the removal of cladding in the social housing sector, but is not putting any money into the removal of the material from private blocks.
Barratt Developments, Legal and General, Taylor Wimpey and Mace have all said they will pay for work to remove cladding, while warranty provider the National House Building Council agreed to fund the removal from New Capital Quay in Greenwich.
The government has provided £465,000 to leaseholder’s group LEASE to pay for the legal advice regarding the removal of cladding.
It says the use of the cladding was ‘banned’ under official guidance – although this is disputed by the industry which say it was permitted by a passage in Approved Document B which sets the standard for external surfaces of walls at ‘Class B’ (or Class 0) rather than the higher standard of ‘Class A2’.
Combustible insulation, however, is clearly not permitted by the guidance, unless the system it is part of is deemed safe by evidence from a large-scale test.
In the years before Grenfell, developers used desktop studies to claim commonly used, but untested, combinations of combustible materials would pass if tested.
Category three ACM has never passed one of these large-scale tests.
In the days following the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017, Inside Housing launched the Never Again campaign to call for immediate action to implement the learning from the Lakanal House fire, and a commitment to act – without delay – on learning from the Grenfell Tower tragedy as it becomes available.
One year on, we have extended the campaign asks in the light of information that has emerged since.
Here are our updated asks:
GOVERNMENT
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
LANDLORDS