Housing: Rochester and Strood

(asked on 15th April 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to support leaseholders in buildings with dangerous cladding in Rochester and Strood Constituency.


Answered by
Christopher Pincher Portrait
Christopher Pincher
This question was answered on 20th April 2021

The Government is providing further grant funding of £3.5 billion in addition to the £1.6 billion already provided to fund the removal of unsafe cladding systems from residential buildings of 18 metres and over in England. We are also providing expert construction consultation support to actively engage with those planning and undertaking remediation work being funded by the Government to increase the pace of remediation. In addition to this, the Government is providing a £30 million Waking Watch Relief Fund to pay for the costs of installing an alarm system in high rise buildings with unsafe cladding. Common alarm systems will enable costly waking watch measures to be replaced in buildings waiting to have unsafe cladding removed.

The Government has recently announced a generous financing scheme which will mean that buildings of 11-18 metres in height will be able to make use of finance for the remediation of unsafe cladding, with a commitment that leaseholders will not need to pay more than £50 a month towards this. By providing this financing scheme we are ensuring that money is available for remediation, accelerating the process and making homes safer as quickly as possible. We are developing the underpinning details to ensure it protects leaseholders, prioritising affordability and accelerating remediation where required and we will release further information on this financing scheme as soon as we can.

However, Government funding and other support does not absolve industry from responsibility and taking action. We expect developers, investors and building owners to cover remediation costs themselves, meeting their legal and contractual obligations, recovering costs or drawing on warranties where applicable, without passing on costs to leaseholders. This is happening in over half of all private sector high-rise residential buildings with unsafe Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding systems.

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