Now Hammond accused of blocking moves to improve tower block safety
PHILIP Hammond has become embroiled in another row with the Government after senior Whitehall sources claimed he had personally blocked moves to improve the safety of tower blocks in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Sources said yesterday that when he was Chancellor, Mr Hammond vetoed efforts to accelerate the process of making the buildings safe on the grounds that private leaseholders should pay to replace the hazardous cladding.
The row comes in the wake of last week’s report into the deaths of 72 people in the blaze in June 2017. It concluded that the cladding surrounding the tower in West London did not comply with building regulations and was the main reason for the fire’s ‘shocking’ spread.
Campaign group Grenfell United said the report showed ‘the real dangers’ of highly combustible cladding and insulation, adding: ‘The Government needs to treat this as a national emergency.’
Cladding on 228 buildings failed safety tests after the Grenfell fire.
But senior Whitehall sources say Communities Secretary James Brokenshire was embroiled in a ‘ running battle’ with Mr Hammond’s Treasury over plans to establish a private sector building fund to make the buildings safe.
They said this continued even after ‘it became obvious that Government intervention was necessary because building owners were not playing ball’. One source said: ‘Hammond still fought until the bitter end to get leaseholders to pay for the recladding. His logic was that as the law stated leaseholders should pay, we should respect that and not pay for stuff that wasn’t our liability.
‘He only finally relented in June this year, but in his letter confirming the funding he still complained about providing the funding even then. We wasted nearly a year because of his intransigence.’
The source said Mr Hammond argued that landlords had a duty to ensure their properties were safe and should not be allowed to escape their responsibilities.
A spokesman for Mr Hammond – who left the Cabinet when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in July – said: ‘James Brokenshire wanted to use £200 million from the affordable housing fund to pay for recladding on private sector blocks. Philip believed private sector recladding should be paid for by the private sector, rather than using public money.’