Residents ‘still await repairs to cladding’

LEEDS CENTRAL MP Hilary Benn has said those who live in flats with dangerous cladding are still waiting for details on how a Government scheme which promises to pay for safety repairs will work, as a new report found 70 per cent of respondents still had combustible materials on their building.

Earlier this year the Government announced a new £1bn fund to pay for the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding for high-rise buildings.

This was on top of £600m already pledged to remove the type of cladding which was on Grenfell Tower.

Owners of flats in a dozen buildings in and around Leeds were reported to be paying up to £400 a month each for 24-hour fire marshals – known as waking watch – as an interim measure to avoid being evicted, after West Yorkshire Fire Service inspectors found their buildings were unsafe.

But last week Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said work to remove unsafe cladding on high-rise tower blocks has come to a halt on up to 60 per cent of sites due to coronavirus.

Labour’s Mr Benn said: “My constituents who are leaseholders are continuing to face the nightmare of an unsafe home, the cost of waking watch bills, and they still have no idea when their homes are going to be made safe. And we urgently need the Government to set out how their funding will in practice be available to get this work started as soon as possible.”

Mr Jenrick said this week “vital building safety work must continue despite the coronavirus pandemic”.

He said: “Work on many of these critical sites was paused early on, it’s now slowly starting to reassume as a result of this initiative, and I would urge any building owner or contractor to do so, as soon as practicable where it’s safe to begin work once again.”