Why building safety campaign group continues to fight on
THE End Our Cladding Scandal campaign group has denounced the Government’s latest plan to facilitate office conversions without planning permission as reckless, as it calls for a fairer and faster end to the crisis over building safety.
It points out that there are plenty of sites where permitted development rights experiments went badly wrong, trapping residents in dangerous buildings.
The group also continues to demand that the Government delivers a fairer and faster end to the building safety crisis, which continues to pour misery and huge bills onto innocent leasehold apartment owners.
In its manifesto, the End
Our Cladding Scandal (EOCS) group says: “More than six years after the Grenfell tragedy, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in unsafe and unsellable flats.
"Over 10,000 residential buildings across the country are still waiting for remediation of cladding and other critical building safety defects.
“Since we launched our campaign in 2019, the Government has announced £5.1bn of funding through the ACM Cladding Remediation Fund, Building Safety Fund (BSF) and the Cladding Safety Scheme, although only a quarter of this has been spent since the BSF launched three years ago.
“This funding will also largely be offset by a tax on development and the income HM Treasury will gain through VAT and other taxes.”
The EOCS adds that Government funding is focused only on cladding remediation when the building safety crisis goes far beyond external cladding and so should funding solutions.
Adding complicated layers of who may or may not qualify for protection has also left many thousands of leaseholders facing life-changing costs.
The EOCS wants to see the Government forward fund all remediation costs. Last year, the Irish Government announced it would fund the remediation of all defective apartments up front.
The EOCS says: “The quickest way to make homes safe is for the Government to fully fund remediation of all defects up front and then use its ability to recover costs from other responsible parties. This is the same approach that has already been taken for cladding.
“The next fire won’t wait, so we need to see much more action to make homes safe, much more quickly. We need a comprehensive solution that will protect all blameless leaseholders and residents.”
Among a host of must-haves in the plan are:
"Definitive, risk-based guidance for buildings of all heights and for external and internal defects, so safety assessments and remediation required will be clear and consistent.
“The pace of making homes safe must accelerate as leaseholders are dicing with another catastrophe with every passing day.
“Every leaseholder must have equal protection from the cost of remediating safety defects. They must not be penalised by an onerous mortgage lending process and exorbitant building insurance premiums.
“The building safety crisis goes far beyond external cladding with equal consideration given to non-cladding defects.
“All affected buildings including those under 11 metres should qualify for help.”
“The Government should consider compulsory purchase orders to take ownership of the freehold of any building where the owner fails to remediate by a set deadline.”
www.endourcladdingscandal. org