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An action plan to accelerate remediation of private high rise residential buildings with ACM cladding, the kind discredited since the Grenfell Tower fire, has been announced.
The aim of the package of measures is to drive forward swifter action by building owners to remove potentially unsafe cladding on private sector high rise residential buildings.
Since the Grenfell Tower tragedy a year ago, local authorities have been working hard to identify affected buildings in their areas and have carried out the large scale, complex task of assessing more than 6,000 buildings.
The latest monthly data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) shows that 297 private sector high rise residential buildings have unsafe cladding with a small additional number expected to be confirmed.
Building owners are responsible for ensuring the safety of their buildings and their residents, and the Government and councils will continue to monitor and hold them to account where they have unsafe cladding systems, according to Secretary of State for Housing James Brokenshire who announced the plan.
He revealed that local fire and rescue services have been informed about all of these buildings to ensure appropriate interim measures are in place so residents are safe now, adding that Ministers have been clear that building owners are responsible for making buildings safe and local authorities have also started enforcement action in all but a handful of cases to compel them to take action.
Whilst remediation work has begun on 21 of these buildings, of which four have been completed, he pointed out that the Government is determined to accelerate the pace of this work and this package aims to progress this work.
Under the plan a new taskforce will oversee a national programme of remediation in the private sector and ensure plans are in place for every single building affected. The taskforce will be chaired by ministers and membership will include Local Government Association (LGA), National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC), London Councils, local authorities who have experienced the largest degree of impact and industry representatives.
A new inspection team, backed by £1 million government funding, consisting of experts from environmental health, building control and fire inspection will provide support to individual councils boosting their capacity and expertise to undertake enforcement action and ensure building owners take the necessary action and speed up the remediation process.
A follow-up industry roundtable next month will be held to that representatives can present their proposals on solutions to remove unsafe cladding from high-rise buildings without passing on the costs to leaseholders.
In the meantime, MHCLG will continue to explore other routes for protecting leaseholders, such as supporting local authorities to take more targeted action to identify and remediate affected buildings and recovering costs from those responsible for ensuring the safety of buildings and supporting leaseholder enfranchisement.
Letters will be sent to all relevant private sector building owners to remind them of their responsibility to make their buildings safe.
‘The safety of residents is my main priority and fire and rescue services are working with building owners to ensure residents are safe now. But I want to see swifter progress in removing unsafe cladding which is why I have announced further action to support councils as they work with owners of high rise blocks,’ said Brokenshire.
‘I have been clear that leaseholders should be protected from unfair costs and we expect the industry to do the right thing. If they don’t, I will continue to explore other routes and I am not ruling anything out,’ he added.
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