Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]]

Happy birthday, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thousands of residents across Salford live in unsafe homes. They are families, key workers, couples and people young and old who want to be part of the vibrant city that Salford has become. Many scrimped, saved and pushed themselves to their financial limits to buy their home, and they were assured that they were safe—but they were not. Now they not only live in fear for their lives, but face financial devastation for a crisis that they did not cause. One high-rise block in Salford estimates fire-safety remediation costs of up to £100,000 per flat. Buildings even under 18 metres are failing EWS1, and many residents are being forced to pay thousands for measures such as waking watch and increased insurance premiums. Those people are at risk. They are trapped, and they cannot move, sell or even remortgage their homes.

Various Secretaries of State over the last few years have made sympathetic noises. They have even applauded cases where developers have stepped up and footed the bill. However, sympathetic noises were all they were. The Government never legislated to ensure that leaseholders did not have to pay. In fact, the draft Building Safety Bill and the Fire Safety Bill did quite the opposite, and the building safety fund is sadly inadequate and inequitable. The fund set aside only £1.6 billion for remediating buildings. It was only for cladding, despite the Government knowing that the crisis went far beyond that, and it excluded buildings under 18 metres. In reality, the total bill is estimated at around £15 billion for cladding alone.

Leaseholders did not cause this crisis. It was not they who breached safety and building regulations. It was not they who signed their buildings off as safe, and it should not be them who pay for this scandal. The Government have a moral duty to support today’s motion. They have a moral duty to agree to legislate within the Fire Safety Bill for the principle that leaseholders should not pay for historical fire safety defects. They have a moral duty to lead an urgent national effort to carry out fire safety remediation by June 2022, to forward fund that work, and to reclaim the costs from those responsible, or via a levy on new development.

The Government’s first priority must always be the safety and welfare of their people. In the words of one of my constituents, “I just wish the Government would step up and act.”