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Jenrick hints at more funding for leaseholders affected by cladding scandal
Leaseholders trapped in buildings with potentially dangerous cladding could get more financial support from the government, Robert Jenrick has hinted.
In an interview with The Guardian, the housing secretary said he wanted to do more for people facing huge remediation costs and left with worthless, unmortgageable flats and suggested he would lobby the Treasury to help people left in “an appalling situation” by the crisis.
He did not provide further details on what any potential extra aid could look like.
Inside Housing has relaunched its End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, run in partnership with affected leaseholders and Grenfell survivors, calling on ministers to take “urgent, national” action to fix the issue.
Tens of thousands of buildings across the country are suspected to be wrapped in unsafe cladding, which was exposed as a deadly threat by the Grenfell Tower fire.
Leaseholders in affected blocks of flats are facing crippling bills to remove the material, with many seeing their homes become valueless.
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Ministers made £600m available to pay for the remediation of Grenfell-style aluminium composite material cladding and a further £1bn for other types of cladding.
But these sums are expected to be woefully insufficient to cover the full cost of works needed across all buildings.
The government estimates that the £1bn fund will pay to fix around 600 buildings, but it revealed last week that nearly 2,800 buildings have registered so far.
Mr Jenrick also moved to defend a new algorithm for calculating how many homes local authorities must see delivered in their areas.
Some Conservative MPs and councils have criticised the changes, which dramatically increase the requirements in rural and suburban areas controlled by the party.
“If we’re going to address the very severe affordability issues being faced by young people in particular… that does mean significantly increasing the number of homes that we’re building as a country,” Mr Jenrick said.
“And that will mean all parts of the country. I do think this has to be viewed as part of the moral mission of the Conservative party, and our best chance of success in the long term.”
It comes after Boris Johnson promised to “fix” the problem of unaffordable deposits through 95% loan-to-value mortgages in order to create a new “Generation Buy”.
The prime minister made the comments in an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Friday.
