‘Unending nightmare’ for cladding residents
RESIDENTS of buildings with flammable cladding say their lives are an “ongoing, unending nightmare” and they live in fear of being thrown out of their homes.
Many say the cladding has made their flats “worthless” and they are “trapped” and unable to sell the properties.
It comes as Labour has demanded a national task force be established to “get a grip” on the cladding crisis.
Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, who visited residents of Royal Artillery Quays in Woolwich, south-east London, yesterday, said it was a “scandal” that tenants and leaseholders were being asked to “foot the bill” for interim safety measures.
Timea Szabo, 37, who lives in a flat with her son, said safety and security had been “ripped from us”.
“Your home is supposed to be your safe place, where you go and feel safe and shut the door and can relax,” she told the Press Association. “We don’t have that any more, it’s not actually safe... I don’t see a way out because the Government is not engaging with us. It’s an ongoing, unending nightmare.”
Ministers are due to debate the issue of protecting tenants and leaseholders from unsafe cladding.
Labour will push for a vote demanding the Government urgently establishes the extent of dangerous cladding and prioritises buildings according to risk.
Sir Keir said a national taskforce would “put some energy” into efforts to identify and address dangerous and at-risk buildings – he hoped the debate would be a “turning point.”
It comes more than three and a half years after the disaster at London’s Grenfell Tower in 2017, which claimed the lives of 72 people.
“This is not on, three-and-a-half years after Grenfell, and this is not party political,” he said.
Ms Szabo, who works in financial services, said service charges for her home had risen from £260 to £450 per month, which was a “huge and unaffordable” increase. She added that many of the flats are now “worthless” and residents faced unspecified increases on insurance premiums.
“No one will buy [my flat], no one should buy it,” she said. “I’m just waiting for the day when I am thrown out of my home with my son – and then I’ll lose my career.
“It is indescribable, the amount of pressure we are under.”
Germana Bacchini, 34, said she had been forced to choose between paying the service charge or her daughter’s education, and had put ambitions of having more children on hold.
“The idea of having a family has stopped for the moment, we have to live day by day and we are not looking forward to the next bill,” she said.
A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: “Leaseholders shouldn’t have to worry about the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects in high-rise buildings that they didn’t cause – and should be protected from large-scale remediation costs wherever possible.
“We all want to see homes made safer, as quickly as possible, and backed by our £1.6 billion funding we are making good progress on remediating unsafe homes. The Building Safety Bill is the appropriate legislative mechanism for addressing these issues and will be brought forward in due course.”