The Guardian view on the cladding scandal: tough talk must be matched with substance
For those who bought flats in tower blocks built with flammable materials, the dream of home ownership has become a nightmare. The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 revealed that thousands of people in Britain were living in flats which were wrapped in unsafe cladding. Five-and-a-half years later, only 7% of dangerous homes have been fixed. Leaseholders have been stung with bills of more than £200,000 for defects they had no hand in creating. The effects of this are psychological as well as financial: one survey found that 90% of people affected by the cladding crisis said their mental health had deteriorated; 23% reported having suicidal feelings or a desire to self-harm.
Ministers long refused to acknowledge that slashing red tape played a role in this scandal. Their evasion was partly founded on hostility to regulations and loyalty to an industry whose leaders are among the key donors to the Conservative party. So a recent admission from the secretary of state for levelling up and housing, Michael Gove, that lax regulations were partly to blame for Grenfell, was a welcome shift in tone. The rulebook was “faulty and ambiguous”, allowing the industry to “put people in danger in order to make a profit”, he said. For those who campaigned tirelessly to make homes safer, this was confirmation that the ideology of deregulation helped to create this scandal, and that its beneficiaries should be on the hook for fixing it.
Mr Gove’s hardball stance is an improvement on his predecessor’s attempt to solve the problem. He has now given 49 housing developers a six-week deadline to sign a contract requiring them to fix fire safety defects. If they refuse, they will be stripped of planning permission for new schemes. This tough talk must be matched with substance. Had ministers acted on multiple safety warnings after the fire at Lakanal House in 2009, the cladding crisis could have been averted. If fully enforced, the new contract will only cover an estimated 1,500 buildings (more than 10,000 are expected to need work).
Lisa Nandy, the shadow housing secretary, questioned whether Mr Gove had diluted the terms of the contract to placate developers. In particular, it restricts their liability to fixing problems that are deemed “life-critical”, but problems that are not life-critical may still discourage mortgage lending. This could mean that some leaseholders stuck in unsaleable properties will still have to pay to fix unsafe homes they bought in good faith. Were this to happen, it would hardly inspire belief in Mr Gove’s commitment to fairness.
The government has made more than £5bn available to fund cladding remediation work and will force developers to stump up an additional £5bn. The cost of repairs could be far higher, as the true number of affected buildings is still unknown. Last year’s building safety act adopted a “waterfall” approach to liability, with developers paying first, then manufacturers, followed by freeholders and then leaseholders. Campaigners now want the government to take the place of leaseholders in this chain. Stringent government intervention will be required at every stage to ensure those ahead of leaseholders do not shirk their responsibilities. Meanwhile, thousands are still living in dangerous flats and two buildings wrapped in combustible cladding have gone up in flames since 2017. When the Grenfell Tower inquiry reports later this year, Mr Gove may be forced to explain why.