‘We’re scared we’ll be subsequent Grenfell,’ say cladding disaster victims

Families living in homes with dangerous and flammable cladding have spoken about how their lives have been ruined by failures to fix the crisis.

Residents living across the UK – mainly in London – said they live in fear of a Grenfell Tower-like fire happening in their unsafe tower blocks. But many are trapped in their flats and unable to move as their risky nature brands them unsellable.

Families stuck in dangerous flats are also facing mortgage anxieties and crippling insurance prices, as well as the impossible task of selling their homes. Leaseholders, who were promised they wouldn’t have to pay for developers’ errors, have been abandoned by the Government with protection schemes excluding many and leaving them to go bankrupt.

Shocking statistics out on Thursday showed some 116,000 residential “dwellings” are in buildings with dangerous cladding that have yet to start remediation work, shocking new figures on Thursday. And 13 blocks of flats have similar ACM (aluminium composite material) cladding as Grenfell Tower and are yet to start remediation work – and 12 of them still have people living in them.

Building Safety Minister Rushanara Ali said: “Today’s statistics again show the remediation of unsafe buildings is just too slow. I’m clear the full force of government will be used to ensure building owners get on with the job and fix homes.” She vowed to speed up the pace of remediation and said plans will be announced in the autumn.

It comes after the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry’s final report earlier this month ruled that the 72 lives lost in the 2017 blaze “were all avoidable”. Seven years on from the tragedy we speak to those who are still battling with the cladding crisis.

‘We’re scared we’ll be the next Grenfell’

IT worker Steve Day, 43, bought his two bed flat in London for £320,000 in 2016. But he said the apartment is technically worthless and unsellable until repairs are completed. He said: “No-one chose to live here knowing it was unsafe. We’ve been waiting for all the defects to be fixed since October 2018 We have single mothers, pensioners, people on low incomes living here, it’s a terrible situation.

“We do not want a partial remediation – we want the whole building to be made safe, insurable and sellable. For example, Barratt wants to leave combustible materials found on the fire stairs, despite advice from the national fire chiefs council. They’re allowed to do that but it doesn’t make it right.” Service charges for 400 leaseholders at the complex have increased from £3,000 to £6,000 a year to fund higher building insurance premiums.

Mr Day added: “People are scared that a fire will break out and we will be the next Grenfell. The situation is causing great anxiety. Not just because of safety but also financial worries. Many of us are facing mortgage worries and crippling insurance.”

At Royal Artillery Quays in Woolwich, London, work is still to be completed on fixing defects found in the wake of Grenfell. Barratt Developments, which built the complex in 2003 and fitted combustible EPS cladding, had vowed to make the complex safe. The product was made by Weber, a subsidiary of French company Saint-Gobain which also owns Celotex – makers of the RS5000 insulation installed on Grenfell. But leaseholders say the £16m work is yet to be completed, with parts of the building still covered in potentially flammable material. Barratt said in August that it was waiting for sign off from building safety regulator to begin work.

‘This has absolutely broken me’

Years of poor construction that led to the cladding crisis has left Malcolm Cameron-Lee bankrupt and “broken”. The 60-year-old said he put all his savings into buying nine flats in a block in Salford in 2008, when he was worried about changes to pensions and thought it would be safer to keep his money in properties.

But after a post-Grenfell review found flammable cladding and insulation problems he saw the flats, which he bought for an average of £90,000 each, become unsellable and be valued at £0. He was told it would cost £30-35,000 per flat to rectify the issues – and because he owned more than three properties he was not eligible for any Government protection from the hefty bills.

The former electrical engineer, who recently battled cancer and heart problems, cannot afford the costs but in the meantime has lost thousands to rising service charges on the flats, insurance costs and soaring mortgage rates. “They’ve taken away 40 years of work, plus my pension,” he said. “If I wasn’t with my wife, I’d be on the streets now, for sure.”

Malcolm said the situation has “absolutely broken me” and he now faces losing the flat he and his wife Helen live in in London. “We’ve had someone over at the bankruptcy trustees who had an estate agent come over to value our place two weeks ago,” he said. “They will value it and because we’re joint owners of our home, then they will decide what is my share. If my wife can’t buy me out, which she won’t be able to afford to do, then we will lose our own home.” Malcolm added: “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

He said the Government needed to give more support to leaseholders whose lives have been ruined by construction firms failing to meet building standards and fire regulations. Vowing for there never to be a repeat of Grenfell, Labour’s manifesto pledged to “better protect leaseholders from costs and take steps to accelerate the pace of remediation across the country”. Malcolm said: “They need to come good on what they’ve pretended to fight for or else it will show that it was all hot words these past five or six years.”

‘It’s been a nightmare’

Sarah Wallbridge has been forced to become an “accidental landlord”, after cladding left her unable to sell her Bristol home. There are 19 flats in her building, but it’s below the 11m height needed to qualify the Government’s leaseholder protections.

Sarah, 38, put the flat on the market last March, and accepted an offer but the prospective buyer was unable to secure a mortgage on the building. “What’s it going to take, another fire? For someone to realise that this is a real problem,” she told the Mirror.

“It’s still a bit scary to hear that the buildings hasn’t been built to the correct specifications and I think the developer who built [mine] has gone bust.” She went on: “It just feels like no one is willing to take responsibility for the work that was done at the start. We’re just a bit stuck. Its been a nightmare.”

‘A huge toll on my mental health’

The cladding scandal has left Deepa Mistry unable to sell her high rise flat – despite now being signed off as safe. Her two-bed flat in Southwark has had 50 viewings in the past year but no realistic offers. The building underwent work in the wake of Grenfell and has been certified as safe. But Deepa says would-be buyers are still put off because of its history.

Deepa, 40, who bought the flat in 2010, said: “We haven’t had much luck in terms of selling it because it’s seen as a marked property. People will look at my property and go across the road to bid twice as much on a new apartment because they feel that it is safer.

“Since Grenfell, people are far more aware of fire safety and I think my flat has been tarnished by what has gone before. There is a two-tier market now.”

Mum-of-three Deepa has moved her family to Leicester where she now rents a home on top of mortgage payments in London. While unable to sell the Southwark property, she cannot get a second mortgage. She said: “In my view the flat is under market value. Other similar properties around Southwark are being listed for 25% more. We are ahead of many other people whose homes haven’t been fixed but we are still struggling to sell.

“I just never imagined that to this day I’d still be affected by the cladding scandal. Being honest, I just want to sell up. Whenever I go back to visit it, I do so with a heavy heart. It has just become a burden. The whole episode has had a huge toll on my mental health.”