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The Greater Manchester mayor has urged the government to provide “immediate funding” to remove dangerous cladding from private tower blocks where leaseholders face huge bills.
Labour mayor Andy Burnham said he has received “increasing amounts of correspondence” from “worried” leaseholders in private blocks where cladding has failed the government’s fire safety tests.
Leaseholders across the country have been told they could be forced to pay bills in the hundreds of thousands to remove unsafe cladding from their buildings.
Mr Burnham’s intervention follows mayor of London Sadiq Khan calling on government to cover the “immediate” costs of cladding work last month.
In a debate in parliament earlier this week, cross-party MPs called on the government to intervene. The government has said it is a legal matter between freeholders and leaseholders but that freeholders should do the “moral” thing and pay the cost of replacing the cladding.
Mr Burnham said: “There will be leaseholders in other blocks facing the same issue, and this is certainly not isolated to Greater Manchester. It is clear to me that residents should not be faced with this financial burden and I ask that you take urgent action to provide the immediate funding needed to carry out this urgent work, while protecting leaseholders and residents.”
He added that the risk is not confined to aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding, and that non-ACM cladding systems also do not comply with building regulations.
He said: “Government has already failed to provide local authorities and social landlords with additional funds to carry out fire safety works and now hard-pressed residents are faced with increases in service charge bills, which is putting many at risk of hardship, and flats are in effect worth nothing if the non-compliant cladding remains in place.”
Mr Burnham said it is “over simplistic” for the government to say housing providers should pay the costs of removing cladding because it “fails to recognise the complexities of leasehold arrangements”.
“It also fails to recognise that in many cases the freeholder is not responsible for the installation of the defective cladding systems,” he added.
Leaseholders living in the Fresh building in Salford recently lost a tribunal case and now face a collective cost of around £100,000 for interim fire safety measures.
The Greater Manchester mayor added that leaseholders in Manchester’s Green Quarter have recently been told they will have to pay £1m for the removal of cladding that is the same type as used on Grenfell Tower.
A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “Building owners are responsible for ensuring properties are safe and we expect them to fund fire safety measures. Councils and housing associations have made it clear that they will not be passing on the costs of fire safety measures to leaseholders, and that is the right approach.
“We would expect private sector building owners and managing agents to follow the lead of the social sector, and we are keeping the situation under review."