Flat owners face £30bn bill to solve safety crisis

Residents fear they are falling through the cracks of a broken property system. By Melissa Lawford

Britain’s cladding crisis has opened up a Pandora’s box of building defects that could cost £30bn to fix, safety experts have estimated. The warning comes as the Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, this week announced a further £3.5bn to replace unsafe Grenfell-style cladding on apartment buildings over 18m (59ft) high, as well as a loan scheme to fund the costs for mid-rise buildings.

But both pots are limited to a small number of problems specifically related to cladding. Residents will have no help paying to remedy other problems uncovered by safety checks.

This leaves thousands of property owners in potentially unsafe homes. Many have found their homes did not meet regulations at the time they were built and have major structural defects, such as missing cavity wall barriers and fire breaks. In more than half of safety assessments, cavity defects alone are enough to cause buildings to fail crucial tests, the Fire Industry Association, which operates a portal for External Wall Fire Review (EWS1) forms, said.

Giles Peaker, a lawyer and author of the housing blog Nearly Legal, said: “Mr Jenrick was very specific in tying this to cladding only. Cladding is just the surface of the problem. Once you start investigating for cladding, it reveals problems underneath. Those costs will continue to fall on leaseholders.”

Phil Murphy, a fire safety consultant, estimated that the total cost to cover all necessary remediation in flats would be £30bn – six times the funding the Government has set aside. Safety problems aside from cladding are “everywhere, regardless of a property’s age”, he said.

Chris Watkinson, 33, owns a flat in Milliners Wharf, a tower in Manchester. The building has no cladding problems, but the 261 leaseholders face a bill of £3.1m for other fire remediation works.

After Grenfell, the residents paid £ 26,000 for a fire inspection. “The report said the cladding was fine but everything behind it was completely incorrect,” said Mr Watkinson. It found major problems with insulation, fire breaks, unsealed compartmentations and the steel structure’s paint. Every fire door in the building was found to be defective. Without footing the bill, no resident can sell because they cannot pass the EWS1 tests. But residents are struggling to hold anyone accountable.

Mr Watkinson purchased his flat from Scarborough Group, but it was neither the builder nor the contractor. A spokesman said it acquired the site in 2009, sold the properties and subsequently disposed of its interests. The residents’ association now has responsibility for the building’s safety and has nowhere to turn. No claims can be made against the original developer as it has ceased trading and the residents’ insurance provider is insolvent. Mr Watkinson said: “Nobody can sell, nobody can remortgage. In May my mortgage payments will increase from £221 to £602.”

Adrian Buckmaster, a fire engineer and cladding specialist, said 90pc of the 100-plus buildings he had inspected in the past three years failed because they did not meet regulations at the time they were built. He said: “The regulations that are in place are massively inadequate. We have had a very low standard of regulation over the past 20 years and builders have failed to meet even that standard.”

Problems with regulation extend across the entire new homes sector. The New Build Database, an analyst, is aware of more than 800 houses built by the developer Persimmon with cavity barrier issues. Persimmon said it took the issue “very seriously” and apologised to customers. It has set up a hotline for concerned residents. “We have proactively contacted customers we believe may be affected to arrange inspections, with any issues addressed immediately,” the firm said. “We will continue with the inspection process until we are satisfied that the evidence confirms it is no longer necessary.”

The Home Builders Federation, a trade body, said the industry supported measures to remove the financial burden from residents in high rises and said the industry had set aside £500m to help. A spokesman for the Government said it was urgently improving building safety and was carrying out the biggest reforms in more than 40 years.