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Only one of 56 ACM-clad London blocks gets government cash
Only one of London’s 56 privately owned blocks wrapped in Grenfell-style cladding and eligible for government help has received any money, it has emerged.
City Hall told Inside Housing that £49,496 has been released this week to the owners of the one undisclosed building to help with “pre-tender support”. Two other blocks have been approved for the preliminary funding, with one due to get £95,516, the other £25,104.
The money represents only a fraction of the £150m – from a nationwide pot of £200m – that has been set aside to help fix privately owned London blocks wrapped in aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding.
The money agreed so far only covers initial work, such as erecting scaffolding, and further applications will have to made once the full cost of remediation is calculated. Inside Housing understands that a full application cannot be submitted until the design and cost of the works has been finalised.
The progress on applications for the capital’s 53 other eligible buildings remains unclear, more than four months after the government launched the fund. This is despite the government setting a June deadline for ACM to be removed from all blocks clad in the material.
The Greater London Authority is handing out the funds, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) decides who gets the money.
A spokesperson for London mayor Sadiq Khan said: “There has been a woeful lack of action from the government to ensure building owners apply for funding and ensure their buildings are safe. People living in buildings with unsafe cladding are understandably anxious that they and their families could still be at risk.”
The government first announced details of the £200m fund for private blocks last May as anger mounted over freeholders refusing to pay to make blocks safe.
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Nationwide, progress in processing the fund has also been slow. It emerged last month that just one privately owned block out of 82 applications had received full funding for remediation works. Concerns had previously been raised about the onerous conditions involved in applying for funding.
Across the country, 174 privately owned, ACM-clad tower blocks have yet to be remediated. The government has threatened to name and shame this month the owners of those blocks where work has yet to start.
Ministers are also facing pressure to extend the fund beyond buildings clad in ACM, which is the type used on Grenfell Tower.
Sadiq Khan wrote to housing secretary Robert Jenrick shortly before Christmas, urging him to widen the fund. However, Mr Khan has yet to receive a reply, according to City Hall.
Andrew Dismore, Labour’s London Assembly fire and resilience spokesperson, said: “The almost total inactivity in distributing the private sector remediation fund is symptomatic of the government’s failure to grasp the urgency of the matter.”
Mr Dismore, who first raised the issue in London through a question to Mr Khan, added that the delays were “completely unfair on leaseholders who are left living in buildings wrapped in a material that is so dangerous it’s now been banned outright”.
He said: “This stress is surely compounded by the fact some leaseholders are having to pay out of their own pockets for interim safety measures, such as waking watches.”
Last week, Inside Housing reported on a situation in Leeds where leaseholders in one block are facing an extra monthly bill of £670 to pay for a waking watch.
An MHCLG spokesperson said: “Residents’ safety remains our utmost priority and we are working to ensure remediation work is completed promptly. This month, we will publicly name building owners where action to remediate unsafe ACM cladding has not started. There can be no more excuses for delay.”
