Leaseholders and Cladding

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. Time is short, and other hon. Members have covered many of the issues that I wanted to raise—particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who dealt with the overall issues so well. I just want to say a little about some examples I have encountered.

A man who came to my surgery lives in a relatively new block. He has got a job in Scotland and therefore needed to move from west London, and wanted to sell his flat. He discovered that the people he was going to sell to could not get a mortgage. He has been waiting for months, to-ing and fro-ing between the builders, solicitors and mortgage company to try to find out why there is a delay, because until he gets things sorted out his life is on hold. It appears that the block does not have ACM, but possibly HPL—he is not getting straight answers.

Secondly, the Paragon development jointly built by Berkeley First and Notting Hill housing association some years ago was featured in Private Eye. After many years in which the residents faced damp, Notting Hill Genesis opened up the cavities behind the walls and found a range of problems, including lack of horizontal and vertical barriers—something that other hon. Members have mentioned—and cladding problems in particular. What is worse is that the scaffolding went up over a year ago, and work stopped not long afterwards. Two building companies have gone bust. The residents—the leaseholders; they are shared owners—have been living with their flats exposed to the elements, apart from a sheet of wood, for months. There are also the security issues of having scaffolding outside the windows. There are 700 students living in the other blocks on that estate, who, given the fire in the student block in Bolton, face the same fear.

Finally, there is a large development in my constituency, built by a volume house builder, and three or four of the blocks were transferred under a long lease, or a head lease, to a housing association. It now turns out that the cladding on those blocks is dubious, and possibly ACM. The shared owners and social rent tenants living in those blocks live in fear and uncertainty. The buck is continually passed between the housing association and the developer whose responsibility it is to pay for the problem.

I concur with many of my colleagues here today. The Government must take responsibility for the problem that existed in the first place—the building regulations and the fire regulations that were inadequate, despite warnings from previous fires. Think of the residents, who not only face the costs and cannot sell and move on, but who live in fear that they could be the victims of the next fire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. As I said, MPs from both side of the House are raising these issues. The fire risk of tall buildings with cladding was brought to everybody’s attention after the terrible tragedy of Grenfell Tower. It had not been brought to people’s attention before.

[Ruth Cadbury]

With the deepest respect to the Minister, these issues were raised and recommendations made to the Government at the inquests into both the Lakanal House fire in south London, which took the lives of six residents, and the fire in Southampton, which took the lives of firefighters. Grenfell would not have happened had the recommended building standards been put place.

[Esther McVey]

The Government took immediate action straight after the report. The actions that we took included a comprehensive independent review of building safety, chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt, and we have accepted all the recommendations of her independent review. We will continue to bring forward legislation to deliver an enhanced safety regime for high-rise residential buildings. As we announced last month, we will begin immediately to establish the new building safety regulator—initially in shadow form, pending legislation—which Dame Judith will chair, to oversee the transition to the new regime.