Fire Safety and Cladding

Debate between Robert Neill and Steve Reed

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I completely agree: the leaseholders seem to be the innocent party in all this. They certainly should not be forced to bear the cost, the stress or the worry of having flammable cladding on the place in which they live.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is very clear—the Government have made this clear—that leaseholders should not be left footing the bill. When the developer is also the freeholder, as was the case in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and is prepared, because of the potential reputational damage, to step up to the mark, the problem is resolved. However, as he will know from experience, a difficulty arises when the freehold is sold on, often to a trust company or a financial institution. Unlike a firm of developers, such a body will not be trying to sell houses to the public and is not subject to any reputational pressures, and will use very common clauses in their leases to pass back to their leaseholders any cost that, say, the local authority or Government push on to them. Do we not need a legal mechanism to override that, which is difficult to do with leases, or, in such cases, to compensate leaseholders directly so that they do not lose out? It has to be one or the other.

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I know that he is fighting very hard on behalf of his residents who are living in these circumstances, and he makes a point with which I agree. That is at the heart of our problem with the Government’s response. The Government can say what they like in support of leaseholders, but if they do not act, they are not actually helping them and, unfortunately, a moral obligation is not enforceable in court. We need a legal means of redress for people who have been damaged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) will know, residents in Northpoint Tower in Bromley face bills of up to £70,000 each. People simply cannot afford that, and the stress they suffer from receiving that bill and knowing that, unless they find a way to pay it, they will be left living in a block with potentially flammable cladding on, is simply unacceptable.

[Robert Neill]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again and for mentioning the problem at Northpoint. There is a certain insecurity about the risk of human error at the very least with a waking watch, but the difficulty is compounded by the cash flow impact. Most of these leaseholder groups will have a sinking fund that has been set up over the years, but that is quickly dissipated by the cost of the waking watch. In the case of my constituents, there is an enforcement notice running out in April. They could have the waking watch until then, which will exhaust all the reserves and will mean further calls on funds from people who often have mortgages, because they are often first-time buyers, and who effectively cannot raise any more money because the flats are currently valueless. It is a Catch-22: the money is exhausted, and they have no means of raising any more.

[Mr Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he makes an important point well. The other course of action that would normally be open to a homeowner—selling their home—is not open, because their homes are unsellable. Nobody will buy a flat in a block that has flammable cladding strapped to the outside of it. Whatever the Minister tells us, if we speak to people living in these blocks, they say that they feel abandoned by a Government who told them in the aftermath of Grenfell that everything would be done to keep them safe. They do not feel that they have been kept safe, and they manifestly have not been.

Grenfell Tower

Debate between Robert Neill and Steve Reed

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Just a year ago, following the tragic and horrific fire at Grenfell, the Prime Minister promised to

“do whatever it takes to keep people safe”.

Nearly a year later, every piece of failed safety regulation and every piece of flawed guidance that was in place before Grenfell is still there. That is not acceptable.

Although it is welcome that the Government have belatedly found the funding to help with the remedial works on social housing blocks, they have offered precious little to people living in privately owned blocks. I want to focus on the plight of leaseholders, who feel that the Government have abandoned them and hung them out to dry.

Let us consider briefly why this cladding is on buildings in the first place. Following the deadly Lakanal House fire in 2009, when six lives were lost, an inquest was held. It reported to the Government in 2013. The coroner told the Government that the fire safety regulations were confusing, not fit for purpose and needed to be revised, but the Government did nothing. The same ACM cladding with a polyethylene core continued to be put up on residential buildings. It was put on Grenfell in 2016, and Grenfell went up in flames 2017 with such lethal and tragic consequences.

If the Government had acted on the coroner’s advice after Lakanal, people would never have died in Grenfell Tower. The cladding is on buildings because the Government did nothing to correct the flawed regulations when they were told they were a problem. The moral duty to act was on the Government, but instead of accepting that, the previous Secretary of State made an art form of palming off the blame on anybody else. In this Chamber, he said that it was the responsibility of developers, freeholders, managing agents and insurers, even though there is no proven legal obligation on any of those people to pay for the removal of cladding. The two first-tier housing tribunals found leaseholders responsible for the costs. However, the previous Secretary of State said that he wanted no costs to be passed on to leaseholders, yet he took no action to ensure that. Leaseholders have been left living in unsaleable homes, fearful for their safety, and in fear of unaffordable debt that is often more than they earn in a year.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Constituents in Bromley and Chislehurst have exactly the same problem. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as was mentioned earlier in the debate, the difficulty is that there is no mechanism for enforcing a moral duty and no means whereby leaseholders can get recompense? Should the Government consider some emergency funding comparable with the help that is being given to those in publicly owned blocks?

[Mr Reed]

The hon. Gentleman makes the legal point much more eloquently than I could. I hope that the Secretary of State will listen to that.

Here is a proposal for what the Government might do. First, they should fund the removal and replacement of flammable cladding on all residential blocks on which it is found, whether in the private or public sector. We simply cannot leave leaseholders living in limbo, their lives on hold for years while these issues are dragged through the courts at a snail’s pace. If it turns out that developers, freeholders or whoever are legally liable, the Government can then claim the money back. My guess is that it will turn out that the Government are liable for failing to correct guidance and regulations that they knew were flawed for years before this happened.

The Government’s first priority must be the protection of human life. We cannot allow any more Grenfells. It is not acceptable just to leave this cladding on buildings in which people are living. This dangerous cladding must be taken down, wherever it is found. No more delays, no more Grenfells; let us get this cladding taken down.