Gove signals governmental change of heart in post-Grenfell Tower cladding initiative

The government has ordered a halt to plans to make leaseholders pay to replace potentially lethal cladding installed by builders of residential tower blocks.

Housing secretary Michael Gove, appearing before parliament’s Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, said he did not believe leaseholders should have to foot the bill to make the cladding safe.

The need to replace unsafe cladding became apparent after the horror of the Grenfell Tower fire in one of London’s richest boroughs in 2017, in which 72 people died.

Gove admitted the government had “failed people at Grenfell”.

“I’m still unhappy with the principle of leaseholders having to pay at all, no matter how effective a scheme might be in capping their costs or not hitting them too hard at any one time. My question is why do they have to pay at all?” Gove asked the committee.

Although Gove’s predecessor, Robert Jenrick, had authorised a £3.5bn fund to remove unsafe cladding from buildings more than 18 metres in height, leaseholders living in tower blocks of between 11 and 18 metres in height were merely offered a loan scheme to help them pay for their own cladding replacement costs.

It was not Jenrick’s most controversial decision, however; he is best known for his decision to fast-track a Conservative party donor’s redevelopment scheme proposal in east London a day before new infrastructure charges came in that would have cost the donor – former pornography publisher Richard Desmond – £30mln to £50mln in additional council rates.

Gove’s comments suggest he is on the side of the flat dwellers, rather than the companies that originally constructed the unsafe dwellings. He told the committee Jenrick’s loan scheme would be put on ice and that he believed the government should help with the costs faced by leaseholders, who he described as “innocent parties” in the scandal who are being required to pay “disproportionate sums”.

Meanwhile, Gove said, many of the “guilty men and women” responsible for the tragedy, and the 2009 fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south-east London, are still in business and getting off scot-free.

“I think there have been some organisations and individuals who, instead of making themselves part of the solution, have seen an opportunity to make money for themselves,” Gove told the committee.

Other builders, meanwhile, had possibly opted to put increased profits above the safety of the people living in the flats they had built. Gove said the Grenfell inquiry should look to see whether builders had put “cost reduction ahead of safety”.

“We have a responsibility to relieve some of the obligations faced by leaseholders at the moment, who are innocent parties in this and who are being in many cases asked to pay disproportionate sums when there are individuals in business – some still in business – who are guilty men and women,” Gove told the committee.

Story by ProactiveInvestors