You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Cladding loan scheme must be abolished and replaced with ‘comprehensive’ fund, say MPs
The government’s proposed loan scheme for cladding remediation should be abolished and the Building Safety Fund extended, cross-party MPs have said.
A new report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Select Committee has called on the government to scrap a controversial loan scheme that would see affected leaseholders paying up to £50 per month for remediation works.
MPs said the loan scheme “fails to satisfy the principle that leaseholders should not have to pay for fire safety remediation work”, which ministers have repeated on a number of occasions.
“The loan scheme should be abolished. Instead, costs should be fully met by [a] comprehensive Building Safety Fund, paid for by the government and the industry,” the report said.
Clive Betts, chair of the HCLG Committee, said that while the £3.5bn funding for buildings taller than 18m is welcome, it will be “swamped by the sheer scale of fire safety issues”.
The committee previously said that fire safety remediation could cost up to £15bn in all.
It followed the Fire Safety Bill finally passing through parliament last night, after the government defeated four attempts to include an amendment protecting leaseholders.
READ MORE
The report also urged the government to move away from prioritising buildings taller than 18m and instead focus on buildings where residents are most at risk – assessed through “holistic, evidence-based processes”.
The HCLG Committee said that social housing landlords should be given full access to the Building Safety Fund and the Waking Watch Relief Fund. The exclusion of social landlords risks negative consequences for the wider social housing sector, according to the committee.
Earlier this week Inside Housing reported that the government’s loan scheme, announced in February, may not be up and running for at least a year.
The committee said it is supportive of the proposed developer levy, which Whitehall has said could raise up to £2bn. But the MPs said the government should ensure no costs recovered from the levy are passed on to homebuyers, including housing associations.
The government is not collecting sufficient data to understand the full scale of the fire safety crisis and therefore cannot know the true costs involved, the MPs said. Recent analysis by industry experts found that the costs could be as high as £50bn.
Mr Betts said: “In the years since the Grenfell tragedy, we have been shocked by the reality of the danger that flammable cladding poses, by how pervasive these materials are in modern buildings and by the frequency with which fundamental fire safety measures, including fire breaks and sprinkler systems, are simply not there.
“The government’s recent proposals fail to adhere to the fundamental principle that leaseholders should not have to pay to fix these problems. That is why we have called on the government to enhance support and develop a Comprehensive Building Safety Fund that targets support to where occupants are most at risk, rather than the current height and product-based approach.
“Proposals to implement a loan scheme for leaseholders to pay for cladding remediation on buildings below 18m should also be abandoned.”
Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said: “The absence of government funding to remediate social housing has essentially resulted in a stealth tax on social landlords and their residents which far exceeds any action against those responsible, and is affecting the ability to maintain existing homes and build much-needed new social housing.”
A spokesperson for the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign of affected leaseholders said: “Today, the cross-party Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee is warning the government, in the strongest possible terms, to completely rethink its whole approach to the building safety crisis.
“Boris Johnson needs to listen to the advice of his own MPs and abandon plans for the cladding tax on hardworking leaseholders, many of whom are first-time buyers. The prime minister has already broken his promises to make sure no leaseholder pays to make their home safe. We won’t let him break that promise again.
“We didn’t design these unsafe buildings, we didn’t approve the buildings, we weren’t the ones who built shoddy flats – we shouldn’t have to pay for a mess billionaire developers and the wider construction industry created.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the report is “deeply flawed” and argued that the government is already prioritising the tallest buildings with the most dangerous cladding.
They added: “We have been clear throughout that owners and industry should make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders – and we will ensure they pay for the mistakes of the past with a new levy and tax to contribute to the costs of remediation. For lower-rise buildings which have a lower risk, our generous capped finance scheme will ensure bills are a maximum of £50 per month.
“Our approach strikes the right balance in protecting leaseholders and being fair to taxpayers.”
Update at 09:25am, 29.04.21:
This story was updated to include the government’s response.
Sign up for our fire safety newsletter
Already have an account? Click here to manage your newsletters
