Summary
On 14 June, we will remember the 72 residents of Grenfell Tower who paid such a terrible price for what was a catastrophic failure of industry and Government. While much has changed in the 1,000 days since the fire—including the ban on combustible cladding and the announcement of a new £1 billion Building Safety Fund—it is clear that there is still more to do. This Committee investigated the progress of remediation of high-rise and high-risk buildings, the direct and indirect costs for residents, and wider fire safety concerns that were emerging. Our findings were as follows:
- It is deeply shocking and completely unacceptable that, three years after the Grenfell Tower fire, there are still 2,000 high-risk residential buildings with dangerous cladding.
We have called on the Government to ensure that all buildings of any height with ACM cladding should be fully remediated of all fire safety defects by December 2021. Buildings with other fire safety defects, including non-ACM cladding, should be remediated before the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2022.
- It is clear that the new £1 billion Building Safety Fund will not be sufficient to remediate all 1,700 buildings with combustible non-ACM cladding above 18 metres.
Last year, we called for funding for buildings with non-ACM cladding and so the Building Safety Fund announced at the Budget is very welcome. However, £1 billion is only likely to be sufficient for 600 buildings; a third of the number the Government accepts are at the highest risk.
- We are concerned by the number of exclusions that exist in the Prospectus for the Building Safety Fund.
With a limited application window, the effective exclusion of social housing providers, and a ban on applications where works started before March 2020, the Government is clearly trying to find ways to fit a £3 billion liability into a £1 billion funding pot. These exclusions are wrong and funding should not be allocated on a first-come-first served basis. The Government must ensure that social housing providers have full and equal access to the Building Safety Fund.
- The Building Safety Fund will need to be increased to address all fire safety defects in every high-risk residential building—potentially costing up to £15 billion.
Residents are facing life-changing bills for more than just combustible cladding. If the Government doesn’t provide additional funding, let us be clear: it means tens of thousands of residents sent massive bills for problems that aren’t their fault, and which, in many cases, will be a financial burden from which they will never recover; it means thousands fewer affordable homes, as councils and housing associations are forced to divert funds to remediation projects; and worst of all, it will mean that some works are never carried out.
- The Government should provide funding for the costs of interim fire safety measures, such as waking watches and fire alarms.
Residents are already receiving bills of thousands of pounds for 24-hour ‘waking watch’ fire patrols and new fire alarm systems. None of these things are the fault of residents and they shouldn’t be the ones forced to pay.
- Those who are responsible for this crisis should ultimately be made to contribute to the Building Safety Fund.
Given the urgency of these remediation works, it is necessary for the Government to provide the funding up front. However, it cannot be fair for the financial burden of remediating buildings to rest solely with taxpayers. On individual buildings, we would support the Government taking legal action to ensure those responsible are made to pay. The Government should also undertake a review of proportionate taxes on developers, freeholders and others to help fund these remedial works.
- We would support a much more extensive use of Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) powers, to take direct ownership of the freehold of buildings with serious fire safety defects.
- The Government should give urgent consideration to the establishment of a new national body whose sole purpose is to purchase the freehold and manage the remediation of buildings with serious fire safety defects.
Any residential building where works have not commenced by December 2020 should be subject to a CPO. The national body would step in where overburdened local authorities are unable or unwilling to act. Once remediated, buildings should be converted to commonhold and returned to leaseholders.
- The External Wall Fire Review (EWS1) process is not working. The Government should take control and put in place a much faster and fairer system.
The industry-designed EWS1 process was put in place to allow mortgage providers to make informed lending decisions on high-rise residential properties potentially at risk of serious fire safety defects. However, it is a slow and expensive process and we are concerned that it is being applied to an unnecessarily wide range of buildings.
- The Government must ensure that residents in affected buildings are offered support by the NHS to cope with the physical and mental health toll of living in a potentially dangerous building.
We have heard clear evidence of the physical and mental health toll that this crisis has had on residents. We view this as a public health crisis and the Government must do so as well. The Government should provide basic information to every resident, signposting to services for those worried about their safety or financial situation.
Published: 12 June 2020