Six ways the state failed to prevent the cladding crisis

Talk to anyone for long enough about the UK’s building safety crisis and you soon will be asked: why are we in such a mess? Why, in one of the wealthiest countries on earth with a functioning planning and regulatory system, are thousands of people currently trapped in homes built with dangerous and combustible materials? How could we have allowed so many unsafe buildings to be built, signed off, sold and inhabited for all these years?

Like all questions of this scale, there are multiple answers which combine to form a complex picture. But while people are quick to draw conclusions about reckless builders cutting corners, there is less awareness of the role successive governments and their industry guidance have played in creating the crisis.

The story begins when Margaret Thatcher deregulated the building industry in the mid-1980s. Ever since, government housebuilding rules have been contained in non-mandatory ‘Approved Documents’ which are altered at ministers’ discretion.