Prime minister urged to personally intervene in building safety crisis to address ‘glacial progress, blame game and buck-passing’

As the wait for Labour’s much-anticipated Remediation Bill rumbles on, campaigners are calling for Sir Keir Starmer to meet them to find a way forward.

“Almost nine years after the avoidable fire at Grenfell, and nearly two years after your government took office, hundreds of thousands of leaseholders and residents remain trapped in unsafe and unsellable homes,” the End Our Cladding Scandal group said in an open letter to Downing Street one day before the nine-year anniversary earlier this month.

“They continue to face fear, uncertainty, financial distress and years of delay through no fault of their own.

“In September 2024, you told parliament that a safe and decent home is a human right.

“You promised that Grenfell would be a touchstone for your government and that its legacy would be one of the defining changes of your premiership.

“That promise has not yet been fulfilled.”

Sir Keir’s office did not respond to the letter, but a government spokesperson said: “We recognise the urgency of the building safety crisis and the profound impact it continues to have on affected residents.

“Our Remediation of Unsafe Cladding Bill will make people’s homes safer and restore confidence in the housing market.

“It will introduce clear, fixed deadlines to ensure unsafe buildings are remediated at pace, and will force those responsible to fix unsafe buildings or face criminal prosecution, building on £1bn we’ve already invested to accelerate remediation of social housing.”

Last month’s King’s Speech promised the Remediation Bill would be introduced in the current parliamentary session to address “longstanding gaps” in the law to empower anyone who has paid for cladding work on buildings to pursue manufacturers for some of the costs.

It will also grant regulators powers to enforce remediation, and landlords who fail to address problems could face criminal prosecution.

The letter comes after an opposition peer earlier this week proposed to change the law so that more leaseholders are protected from the cost of fixing building safety defects.

Baroness Pinnock, the Liberal Democrats’ housing spokesperson, set out a suite of changes to building safety laws in a private members’ bill last week.

The bill seeks to tackle issues that were previously highlighted by a campaign group representing residents affected by the building safety crisis.

A key part of the legislation is extending legal protections for the cost of fixing building safety defects to residents living in buildings of any height.

Under the current rules, leaseholders in blocks under 11 metres high do not qualify, but can still be hit with five-figure bills for cladding remediation.

Other changes the bill seeks to make is bringing in deadlines to fix safety defects, and extending the scope of the remediation required to non-cladding issues, such as balcony repairs and faulty utilities.