Five Years After Grenfell, Will All Kiss Victims Now Get Help? | housing

[ad_1]

On June 14, 2017, a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower building in North Kensington, west of London, in the UK’s deadliest structural fire since World War II – 72 people died and more than 70 were injured.

A government review of building codes after the fire concluded that apathy and ignorance had led to a “race to the bottom” in building safety practices, with cost prioritizing over safety.

What is the kiswa crisis?

In 2019, the chair of the Grenfell Inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Pick, concluded that the “main reason” for the fire to spread at such a rate was due to the combustible cladding with a polyethylene core, which served as a “fuel source”.

In the wake of the tragedy, the government created a building safety program that “ensures residents of high-rise apartment buildings are safe, and feel safe from fire hazards, now and in the future.”

A national ban has been placed on the use of combustible cladding in new buildings and sprinklers have become mandatory on new buildings over 11 metres.

A total of 477 high-rise apartment buildings and publicly owned buildings were identified as having aluminum composite (ACM) cladding such as that in Grenfell Tower, which had to be removed.

A graph showing the number of buildings found with the same type of ACM cladding What is the estimated cost of the crisis?

Removing the cladding can cost millions of pounds per block, and the full cost of fire safety work on all affected blocks has been estimated at around £15 billion. By June last year, the government had allocated an estimated £5 billion through the Building Safety Fund to remove combustible cladding in high-rise buildings.

Who will pay for removal?

Under the rental system in England and Wales, individual apartment owners often bear the cost, and some have been left with high insurance costs, service charges and exorbitant fees for 24-hour ‘wake-up’ firefighters.

After Grenfell, ministers said building owners had to pay for required fire safety measures, including replacing hazardous cladding. The government said it would cover the reasonable cost of removing and replacing unsafe cladding in housing councils and associations.

Some owners refused to do the work needed to secure the buildings. In May 2019, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said the government would “fully fund the replacement of unsafe aluminum composite materials (ACM) in private high-rise residential properties where building owners have failed to do so”.

Buildings between 11m and 18m are not covered by the Building Safety Trust, so ministers have announced a loan scheme, with tenants paying a maximum of £50 a month.

It was paused by the housing secretary, Michael Gove, in November, who said he was “still not happy” with the principle of paying renters at all.

Graphic: The government has identified 12,500 apartment buildings over 18 metres, or more than six storeys tall (whichever is reached first), in England, what will happen now?

Gove is expected to announce that tenants in buildings 11-18 meters (36-60 feet) tall will no longer have to take out loans to cover costs. Instead, it will try to get developers to pay £4 billion, according to a leaked Treasury letter reported by BBC Newsnight.

But the Treasury letter states that the financing approval applies only to cladding repairs, which means that renters facing bills for faulty fire cabins, fire doors, and other non-cladding defects still face bills and uncertainty about whether mortgage companies will lend their homes to make it viable. for sale.

[ad_2]