The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Money
‘A blank cheque is hanging over my head’
Telegraph writer Boudicca Fox-Leonard on how her life has been put on hold as one of millions trapped in a flat with cladding, facing a huge bill
Ididn’t know my neighbours until three months ago. Now I know that Mary and her husband have a seven-month- old baby, and that they want to move back to Canada to be closer to her family, but they can’t. Like me, they are trapped in a “ticking time bomb” of a home.
Mary’s husband’s Canadian permanent residency card, which took years to obtain, will expire at the end of this year if they don’t migrate. Their lives, like those of the 258 leaseholders in my building in east London, and millions around the UK, have been reduced to a Monopoly game of unfair chance.
Building safety has been under scrutiny since the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, and defects have been discovered on thousands of blocks. As many as 11 million homeowners have been left unable to sell their properties because of dangerous materials on their building, or because blocks have not yet passed tests, and so have been declared unsafe.
Soon after Grenfell happened, we had an inspection and were told that we were safe. Then in November, we discovered the building fell into “category B2” – code for very, very flammable. Since then, I’ve felt the extremes of maddening anger and limp resigned passivity. As a teenager, I loved Franz Kafka’s The Trial. I couldn’t imagine living in a country where such mind-boggling injustice would be possible. Now I can.
So far, the Government has set up a fund of £1.6bn, yet the true amount needed could be as high as £15bn. It allocates a contribution to the remediation money needed on a “first come, first served” basis and isn’t even available to buildings under 18m (59ft).
The management company has said there doesn’t seem to be a clear system: each case just muddles its way through and you hope for the best.
Being part of this crisis can feel like you’re part of a shipwreck scene playing out on Twitter, with us leaseholders frantically waving from our sinking raft to the larger passing ships of ministers Robert Jenrick, Christopher Pincher and Lord Greenhalgh – who somehow always seem to miss us as they congratulate themselves on their plans to build more affordable homes.
All the while, we are screaming: “What about us, out here in the cold, slipping under the waves?”
I still love my shoddy, dangerously flammable flat, but it is a millstone that is set to strip me of my financial independence. I am now 36, and time is ticking on starting a family. How could I even begin to do so with a blank cheque hanging over me waiting to be filled in? It’s the not knowing what’s coming that is emotionally paralysing.
We don’t know the average cost per leaseholder in my building yet – countrywide, it’s the same story.
According to Lord Greenhalgh, the average estimated cost per leaseholder will be £9,000. Right now, I would be overjoyed if I could pay that amount and move on with my life. That’s because realistically I am preparing myself for something closer to £ 50,000, which is what a poll by trade body the Association of Residential Managing
Agents found the average bill could be. Meanwhile, some people in other buildings are being quoted £100,000-plus, with one leaseholder told they face a bill of more than £200,000.
That’s without taking into account the burden of “waking watches” ( to patrol our properties 24 hours a day), rocketing insurance premiums and spiralling service charges.
Despite my fancy name, I don’t come from money. I bought my flat with savings and a share from the probate of my grandmother’s former council house. I chose to be upwardly mobile, to invest in home ownership. And like the majority of leaseholders in my situation, I bought what I could afford; a new-build flat. With hindsight, I wish I’d been less responsible.
Most days, I feel numb. How can this be allowed to happen? My disbelief is shared by friends, family, anyone who will listen to me talk about it. “How can this even be possible?” they say incredulously.
The Government has hinted that a new funding package will be announced soon, and an amendment on the Fire Safety Bill could mean no costs will be passed on to the leaseholder.
But that could fail, and ministers have been whispering loudly about leaseholders taking loans, a so- called “cladding tax”. That would be catastrophic.
Such loans, added to our service charges, would make our homes unaffordable and unsellable, and push many into negative equity. Who would buy a property that comes with a skyhigh service charge? Leaseholders would be tied to their debts for years, paying for historic building defects not of our making.
I fear if that happens, those of us stuck in this nightmare will never be able to wake up from it, never be able to move on with our lives.