Cladding

The Number 10 Christmas parties during lockdown have dominated the news agenda in recent days – and for good reason. But there has arguably been an even bigger government scandal brewing, one which has largely been overlooked in Westminster. On Tuesday the government told the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that it was ‘deeply sorry’ for the ‘past failures’ which contributed to the devastating 2017 fire which killed 72 people. Apologies always come in varying forms of breadth and sincerity and this one (as is often the case when delivered by an expensive QC) was carefully limited. The government said that it had assumed fire regulations were being monitored ‘at a local

Marwa al-Sabouni is a Syrian architect who watched her home city of Homs destroyed during the Syrian conflict between 2011 and 2014. Out of that experience, she penned an  intensely moving and haunting account of what the idea of home means. She writes of how the dwellings we live in are intimately connected with our own sense of self: ‘Our homes don’t just contain our life earnings, they stand for what we are. To destroy one’s home should be taken as an equal crime to destroying one’s soul.’ It’s a statement that echoes the biblical vision of every person able to ‘live in safety, under their own vine and under their

The government’s Building Safety Bill has been a long time coming, but its publication today offers little certainty for residents caught up in Britain’s cladding scandal. For leaseholders, the bad news is this: many will remain trapped in buildings cloaked in combustible external wall systems. Despite the housing secretary Robert Jenrick’s insistence that the new system would ‘reassure the vast majority of residents’, there is little in the bill to alleviate their worries.  To throw more money at it will inevitably lead to more corners being cut and workers without the proper competence being drafted in The bill proposes the creation of a new Building Safety Regulator (BSR), although an interim regulator

Robert Jenrick – We will have to ‘learn to live with the virus’ The Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick was the government’s chief spokesman today as England edges ever closer towards the planned relaxation of Covid restrictions on 19 July. Jenrick continued to make positive noises about this date, telling Trevor Phillips that data being examined by the Prime Minister was looking promising – and suggesting that another postponement of ‘Freedom Day’ was highly unlikely. However, Jenrick’s cautious comments did not rule out the return of restrictions in the winter, should cases continue to rise: RJ: It does seem as if we can now move forward… to a much more permissive

Today, for the third time in as many months, MPs will vote on an amendment to prevent the costs of removing cladding and fixing other fire safety defects being passed on to residents. For some time now, thousands of British homeowners have been left fearing for their lives and facing ruinous bills after fire safety issues following the Grenfell Tower fire were identified in tens of thousands of tall and medium rise buildings across the country. In most cases, building owners have been able to charge individual flat owners to fix the defects, even though their apartments were signed off as safe under government regulations at the time. The failure

The Fire Safety Bill comes back to the Commons this afternoon for MPs to consider the changes made by peers — and there’s an amendment in there that Labour hopes is going to cause a bit of a fuss. It’s the reiteration of what’s become known as the ‘McPartland-Smith amendment’ after the two Conservative MPs — Stephen McPartland and Royston Smith — who originally made the demand. The amendment bans leaseholders from being made liable for the costs of remediation work, such as removing flammable cladding from their homes. Raising the cladding issue is something Labour plans to do repeatedly in certain areas as the May poll approaches This amendment was

Most of the Conservative MPs who responded to Robert Jenrick’s statement this afternoon about an extra £3.5 billion to help with the cladding crisis sounded relieved that the government is finally doing something. But if ministers think that the response in the Chamber means they can relax, they are in for a bit of a shock. The two most active Conservative MPs on this issue are Stephen McPartland and Royston Smith, and neither spoke in the Commons after the announcement. But both have been critical elsewhere. McPartland called the policy – which will only offer loans to leaseholders in blocks between 11 and 18 metres high – a ‘betrayal’ and

Boris Johnson had a pretty easy ride at Prime Minister’s Questions today, despite Keir Starmer raising two policy problems that the government is really struggling to stay on top of. The Labour leader asked his first three questions on the quarantine policy, pushing Johnson for much tougher rules, and then turned to the cladding scandal. As we have repeatedly covered on Coffee House, the latter is a huge consumer crisis that is leaving thousands of people trapped in homes they cannot sell or with bills for remedial works to remove dangerous cladding reaching into the tens of thousands of pounds. Starmer channelled Jeremy Corbyn and quoted some of those affected.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Boris Johnson to keep track of the many different revolts within his own party. There are the groups pressuring the government on its response to coronavirus, on its treatment of Northern seats, and on Brexit. Now there’s a new row brewing on a completely different matter: cladding. As Emma Byrne recently explained, this scandal has been building for months, but ministers seem to be doing very little about it. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of people stuck in properties which have flammable cladding similar to that used on Grenfell Tower. Many of them are facing eye-watering bills of tens of thousands of pounds because

Within the next year or two, I could go bankrupt. My mistake: to join a government-backed affordable housing scheme and purchase a one-bedroom flat in east London. For the past four years, it has been my pride and joy — not to mention my savings, my pension and my financial future. I was grateful for the government’s help in getting a foothold in the city. But now another government policy is hurtling towards me, against which I have no defence. Nor do potentially tens of thousands of first-time buyers and the owners of affordable housing in my position. It might be the next big scandal to hit the government. It’s