Homeowners face six-figure cladding bills
Leaseholders face financial ruin after tower-block owners refuse to pay out to replace the same combustible materials that fuelled Grenfell, investigation reveals
TENS of thousands of homeowners are trapped in dangerous tower blocks after being told they will have to pay sums of up to six figures to replace Grenfell-style cladding.
Leaseholders have been warned their homes are worthless because they use the same combustible materials as Grenfell Tower. Meanwhile, property developers, freehold owners and insurers are refusing to pay up.
Despite attempts to keep the identity of the blocks a secret, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has revealed the full extent of the problem.
THOUSANDS of homeowners are trapped in dangerous tower blocks wrapped in Grenfell-style cladding as building owners refuse to foot the bill for its replacement.
Leaseholders across the country are being asked to pay bills that could total hundreds of thousands of pounds per flat just to make their homes fire safe.
Many face financial ruin as the cladding has rendered their homes worthless, leaving them unable to sell, remortgage or secure a homeowner loan to pay for the works privately.
An investigation by The Daily Telegraph has revealed the extent of the problem for the first time, with up to 20,000 privately-owned properties across the country clad in the same combustible material that fuelled the flames which tore through Grenfell Tower more than a year ago.
The Government has said that the buildings’ owners have a “moral responsibility” to ensure the bill does not fall to the leaseholder. But many homeowners face a complex web of companies involved in the construction, ownership and insurance of their homes, all denying responsibility and pointing out that the building was signed off against regulations.
For those who live in properties completed more than 10 years ago, all they can hope for is the good will of the freeholder. With bills that they cannot afford, many face losing their homes.
Sir Peter Bottomley, the Tory MP, said: “Cladding that’s not safe should be removed and the leaseholders should not have to pay. If the law’s wrong, change the law … It’s up to Government to find a way [to make the owners] fulfil their duty. What’s happening is wrong, unfair and intolerable.”
Despite the Government refusing to reveal the names of the tower blocks affected, The Telegraph has identified more than half of the 143 private-sector buildings that have failed the Government’s fire safety tests.
The Government says that in total there are 293 private blocks, including student accommodation and hotels, with cladding that is unlikely to meet current building regulations.
Only nine buildings containing leasehold homes have had work to fix the problems completed in the last year, while in a handful of cases there has been an agreement by the property developers, the owners or the insurers that they will foot the bill.
But in the majority of cases the freeholders have not even begun removing the cladding, a year after homeowners
were told that their lives could be at risk. During this time thousands of leaseholders have been hit with bills of up to £20,000 to pay for 24-hour patrols of their buildings by fire wardens.
An analysis of almost 70 of the privately owned residential blocks that The Telegraph has identified shows that they contain more than 8,500 flats.
This means that the total number of homes in all tower-blocks with Grenfell-style cladding could top 20,000.
The Government, which will foot the £400million bill to replace cladding on social housing blocks, is now under pressure to assist homeowners or change the law to ensure that building owners are responsible.
Merlyn Forrer, who manages Fire Safety for Manchester borough and has worked on the cladding testing programme, said that having cladding containing combustible polyethylene on a building was similar to wrapping it in petrol, and he “wouldn’t put it on a bungalow”.
“The buildings have a value of zero because they are uninsurable and they are unmortgageable,” he told the Tall Buildings Fire Safety Network conference in London. “The tenants are now being asked for £30,000. They can’t get a mortgage, they can’t sell the property and they can’t get a homeowner loan to replace the cladding system. They have lost £100,000 and they don’t have £30,000 to replace to cladding.”
Some experts fear the scale of the problem on private blocks may have been underestimated. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has said many private block owners have not disclosed to the Government that their towers have ACM cladding because of concerns this will affect the valuation.
Two of the blocks identified are in the Green Quarter in Manchester, where flatowners have been told they must pay £10,000 each to replace the cladding after their property manager, Pemberstone, took them to a tribunal.
Fran Reddington, 33, who used Help to Buy to purchase her first home in the Green Quarter, said that they had no idea how they would cover the cost. “We try not to think about those images from Grenfell. We don’t want to think about the fact that our building is
‘The buildings have a value of zero because they are uninsurable and they are unmortgageable’
in a similar state,” she said. “At the forefront of our mind is the financial problem, but that is nothing compared to your life.”
If a tower was built within the last six years, defects are normally covered by the developer, and if work was completed within the last 10 years and does not comply then it should be covered by new-build insurance.
But many residents may be forced to club together to take class action to force firms to pay, with their options further complicated by complex chains of ownership and firms going bust.
Developers have argued that they are not liable as the buildings passed regulations at the time. In each case where residents have attempted to make a freeholder pay through a tribunal they have lost, as it has been ruled that their leases state they are liable.
Despite a tribunal ruling that Barratt Developments were not liable for the works on Citiscape in Croydon, the company have now agreed to pick up the £2million bill.
The Government has told councils to identify private blocks that have ACM cladding. However, in response to Freedom of Information requests many councils said they were unaware of the type of cladding on the blocks, or even how many were within their borough. Councils have also struggled to contact the freeholder of blocks in some cases.