Leaseholders and Cladding Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Florence Eshalomi
Main Page: Florence Eshalomi (Labour (Co-op) - Vauxhall and Camberwell Green)Department Debates - View all Florence Eshalomi's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Leaseholders and Cladding
Florence Eshalomi Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) for securing this really important debate, which affects our constituents across the country.
In my short time as the MP for Vauxhall, I have been made acutely aware of how big a problem the issue is for leaseholders in privately rented and owned buildings. In just a couple of months I have had many cases brought to my attention by constituents who have been unable to sell or re-mortgage. Some have been unable to get the safety certificates that they need from their freeholders, and they pay really expensive service charges. The leaseholders feel trapped in their homes, unable to move, while facing the constant fear that the home where they live might catch fire. How can anybody sleep at night knowing that such a risk lies over their head? None of us could.
It is nearly three years since the Grenfell disaster alerted the whole country to the dangers of combustible cladding, and almost a year and a half since the Government banned ACM cladding on new high rises, so there has been plenty of time for remediation and to see plans put in place and the combustible cladding removed.
It is right that the Government have opened a £200 million fund for private sector blocks to remove cladding. To date, of the 56 tower blocks in London that fall within the scope of the funding, only 10 have submitted plans to get the initial costs covered, and none has submitted full cost plans. The fund is therefore not working. As a result, no money has been distributed to any of the buildings in scope in London nearly a year after the scheme started. We really need the Government to take urgent action to fix the funding system.
The Government can and should do things to help make the system fairer. They could provide technical support to block owners who are not used to dealing with large remediation projects. They are not building technicians or surveyors; they are residents living in their homes. Why do they have to deal with this? We could look at helping the people who struggle to get complex applications off the ground. Ultimately, if the Government have no trust in the private sector to make the leaseholders feel safe in their properties, they need to give local authorities the powers to confiscate the blocks and carry out the works themselves. I hope the Minister agrees that the matter is not one of ideology and us making complaints on behalf of our leaseholders. It is a matter of life and death for many of our leaseholders, so I urge the Government to fund the work properly.