Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Families facing bill of millions in Grenfell cladding scandal
HEARTBROKEN families are facing eviction or bankruptcy if they cannot find millions of pounds to pay for the removal of potentially lethal Grenfellstyle cladding on their homes.
Some 1,000 days after the June 2017 tragedy – which saw 72 killed when flammable material caught fire – an estimated 550,000 people in the UK are living in around 1,600 potentially unsafe buildings, according to figures from the Association of Residential Managing Agents and the Government.
They are calling for the Tories to take action, after two and a half years of empty promises on the removal of dangerous cladding.
They are demanding the government either introduces a grant to fund replacement costs, or brings in a law forcing building owners and developers to pay for the removal of the dodgy material.
The removal of flammable cladding from tower blocks is a key demand of the Mirror’s Grenfell: Never Again campaign.
Stuck in an apartment that he owns and facing huge bills, with his life on hold, 29-year-old Dominic Wroblewski, of Leeds, said: “I’ve cried more in the last three months than I have in my entire life.”
He got engaged to partner Chenfei, also 29, in December but straight after was told by his property management company, on fire service advice, they were living in a building wrapped in flammable cladding. He says his “investment has turned into a prison”.
Elsewhere in the city, the Church of England is locked in a row with the head leaseholder of St George’s Building, with each citing the other for having responsibility for the cladding removal.
Abigail Tubis, who lives in that block, was planning on starting a family with her husband, but instead now faces being out on the street or skint. Her 12-storey block of 92 homes has to pay £400 per flat each month for a “waking watch” – somebody to raise the alarm should a fire take hold.
Her building is covered in highpressure laminate cladding, which was found in a study last year to be just as flammable as the aluminium composite material cladding on Grenfell Tower.
A letter to residents from their former management company told them it would cost up to £69,000 to consult to find a company to remove the cladding, but Abigail says she recently has been told it could cost as much as £76,000.
Another letter said cladding removal could cost £1million, but Abigail says she has been told it could cost up to £2m.
“The government has said they (building owners and developers) should not put the cost on to leaseholders,” said 29-yearold Mrs Tubis, an account manager.
“But until there is a law in place stating that, there is no way it will happen. They need to make it legislation. People like myself and my neighbours are victims and we are trapped – we cannot sell, move out, or rent out our place.”
Last year the Government released a £200m fund to help with the removal of ACM cladding on private buildings, the same cladding that was used on Grenfell. It had long been suspected that other materials were as lethal as ACM and last year government tests found most HPL panels should be removed. HPL cladding was on a student block in Bolton that was engulfed by flames in November, and on Lakanal House, a London tower block where six residents died in a fire in 2009. Last month the Government named five building owners who had not fixed cladding on their properties.
One of them was Adriatic Land 3 Limited, a freeholder managed by a firm led by David Cameron’s brother-in-law
William Astor.
A spokesperson from Homeground on behalf of Adriatic
Land 3 Limited said:
“Naming and shaming building owners, who are committed to fixing these buildings as quickly as possible, is completely counterproductive.
“Residents, managing agents and freeholders have all been clear that this Government needs to step in and address what is clearly a systemic, regulatory failure on the part of successive Governments over many years.”
But in many cases, firms who developed the buildings have gone bust. Mrs Tubis said: “I remember watching the Grenfell tragedy unfold, thinking, ‘How could this happen?’. We bought a lease thinking it was a safe building. I’m anxious, I’m affected by it every single waking moment.” Mrs Tubis founded Leeds Cladding Scandal in November after fire services warned by letter that residents in 13 West Yorkshire blocks, including hers, would have to move