The Cladding Crisis
Discussion
Can't find a thread anywhere about this though it seems to be making the national news on a regular basis - essentially the issue of potentially flammable cladding and the costs associated with managing properties that have it, until it can be replaced.
I just saw an article on BBC News at Ten in which one leaseholder said their annual service charge had gone up to over £15k! Another said she was getting visits from bailiffs chasing debts she'd accrued because her outgoings had rocketed due to hugely inflated service charges.
At what point does it become better for your mental health and longer term financial security to simply hand the keys back to your lender and wash your hands of a property that's hitting you with costs like this? Can you even do such a thing?
I just saw an article on BBC News at Ten in which one leaseholder said their annual service charge had gone up to over £15k! Another said she was getting visits from bailiffs chasing debts she'd accrued because her outgoings had rocketed due to hugely inflated service charges.
At what point does it become better for your mental health and longer term financial security to simply hand the keys back to your lender and wash your hands of a property that's hitting you with costs like this? Can you even do such a thing?
MitchT said:
At what point does it become better for your mental health and longer term financial security to simply hand the keys back to your lender and wash your hands of a property that's hitting you with costs like this? Can you even do such a thing?
If you do that ("voluntary repossession") you're still liable for things like service charges, mortgage interest, etc until it gets sold (if it does, who'd buy it?), and any shortfall between what it sells for and the remaining mortgage is a debt you now have to the lender. So then you're into bankruptcy territory and you'd have to be looking very long term to consider that better for your financial security.Our local one is finally getting sorted out via the Building Safety Fund (which is nowhere near enough to deal with every building, by the way) but the residents have already had to spend a fortune on 24/7 fire patrols and the like to get any kind of insurance cover, which itself is costing way more.
If you're stuck in that situation, you can't move because you can't realistically sell it, you probably can't afford the £30k+ each flat would need to stump to pay for it, and if you're unlucky the extra service charges tip your monthly finances over the edge.
What's the liability here, why are residents being made to pay for decisions made by builders and (possibly) those who write the regulations?
If a car has a dangerous airbag it gets recalled and fixed at the manufacturer's expense - is the cladding situation a case of everything was done correctly at the time but now the regs have changed?
If a car has a dangerous airbag it gets recalled and fixed at the manufacturer's expense - is the cladding situation a case of everything was done correctly at the time but now the regs have changed?
It's a damn awful situation for people to find themselves in and through no fault of their own.
It does seem wrong that the homeowner must pay for the mistakes of others but then it's worth considering that those that installed the cladding could have been acting in perfectly good faith at the time.
It does seem wrong that the homeowner must pay for the mistakes of others but then it's worth considering that those that installed the cladding could have been acting in perfectly good faith at the time.
ScotHill said:
What's the liability here, why are residents being made to pay for decisions made by builders and (possibly) those who write the regulations?
If a car has a dangerous airbag it gets recalled and fixed at the manufacturer's expense - is the cladding situation a case of everything was done correctly at the time but now the regs have changed?
No its more case that industry used and abused the regs working to exact text not the underlying intent through an interesting interpretation of testing requirements to see products that where wholely unsuitable for the end use application used widely. Mostly to save cost on the client side. If a car has a dangerous airbag it gets recalled and fixed at the manufacturer's expense - is the cladding situation a case of everything was done correctly at the time but now the regs have changed?
It is a complete and utter mess that anyone involved on the technical or manufacturer side of coin has and had known about for years.
Here's an article that explains more. https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/grenfell-clad...
The problem is who do you hold responsible? The builder for using the wrong product? The manufacturer for selling (and possibly specifying) the wrong product? Building control for agreeing the usage of the wrong product? The consultant team for also agreeing (and possibly specifying) the wrong product? So many people, so many fingers where the failure was systematic.
IMO it has a lot to do with the absolutist safety culture we find ourselves in.
Grenfell went up like a candle, but the outcomes were compounded by bad advice (stay at home) and no smoke suppression/water on the main staircase. The staircase is still intact, if people had been told to get out, and the staircase was drenched in water, they’d probably be alive today.
Now we have a bunch of flats with similar cladding. Some are low rise, some are high rise. Most will have similar cores to Grenfell - solid stair cases that will survive. If these are suitably protected, have fire suppression and smoke alarms, what is the real risk to life? The smoke alarm goes off, you GTFO, you live. Clearly you don’t put the elderly or anyone who can’t use stairs on the top floor...
I’ll contrast this with what I lived in when I last had a flat - a flat fronted Victorian house. I had the ground floor flat. If I decided to set fire to my sofa, it would burn through the wall behind it and then set the stairs on fire. There’s no water, or concrete, just a carpeted staircase made out of pine. All the people living above me would be dead, unless they were willing to jump out of windows - and even the first floor guy has a big drop to the basement below. And yet millions of people live in similar situations without a care in the world.
Grenfell went up like a candle, but the outcomes were compounded by bad advice (stay at home) and no smoke suppression/water on the main staircase. The staircase is still intact, if people had been told to get out, and the staircase was drenched in water, they’d probably be alive today.
Now we have a bunch of flats with similar cladding. Some are low rise, some are high rise. Most will have similar cores to Grenfell - solid stair cases that will survive. If these are suitably protected, have fire suppression and smoke alarms, what is the real risk to life? The smoke alarm goes off, you GTFO, you live. Clearly you don’t put the elderly or anyone who can’t use stairs on the top floor...
I’ll contrast this with what I lived in when I last had a flat - a flat fronted Victorian house. I had the ground floor flat. If I decided to set fire to my sofa, it would burn through the wall behind it and then set the stairs on fire. There’s no water, or concrete, just a carpeted staircase made out of pine. All the people living above me would be dead, unless they were willing to jump out of windows - and even the first floor guy has a big drop to the basement below. And yet millions of people live in similar situations without a care in the world.
rxe said:
IMO it has a lot to do with the absolutist safety culture we find ourselves in.
Precisely, and Grenfell will be a 'hot topic' (sorry) for years to come, despite other shortcomings in the construction. PIR insulation used to fill the void between the old windows and the new facade (which obviously extended the building line outward) would have likely been a massive contributory factor, completely aside from the cladding itself. The windows are obviously openings into dwellings, so if a fire starts in one dwelling, even if the window is closed, those PIR-filled cavities are putting the whole building at risk. This packing insulation should have been mineral wool of limited combustibility, there should have also been robust cavity closers at specific intervals.The packing of these voids is understood to have been an on-site decision to use a more readily available (and cheaper) product, so who is accountable? It can only be the builder (Rydon) IMO, who are still operating today (madness!)
C.A.R. said:
Precisely, and Grenfell will be a 'hot topic' (sorry) for years to come, despite other shortcomings in the construction. PIR insulation used to fill the void between the old windows and the new facade (which obviously extended the building line outward) would have likely been a massive contributory factor, completely aside from the cladding itself. The windows are obviously openings into dwellings, so if a fire starts in one dwelling, even if the window is closed, those PIR-filled cavities are putting the whole building at risk. This packing insulation should have been mineral wool of limited combustibility, there should have also been robust cavity closers at specific intervals.
The packing of these voids is understood to have been an on-site decision to use a more readily available (and cheaper) product, so who is accountable? It can only be the builder (Rydon) IMO, who are still operating today (madness!)
Cavity closers were provided - they can be clearly seen in videos of the fire. The problem is that the fire was able to circumvent them due to the outside skin being combustible.The packing of these voids is understood to have been an on-site decision to use a more readily available (and cheaper) product, so who is accountable? It can only be the builder (Rydon) IMO, who are still operating today (madness!)
According to the Spectator this is the route the government may go down.
“ The government’s current proposal began when Michael Wade, an insurance guru, was drafted by the Cabinet Office to help find a solution to the cladding problem. The idea he is reported to have thought up is as follows: loans will be provided to the companies which own the freeholds of the blocks requiring remediation. These loans will be backed by government to hold down the interest rate and will be spread over a period of at least 30 years.
But in reality it won’t be the freehold companies who repay the loans. Instead, they will be allowed to pass on the costs to the building’s leaseholders through service charges. Unless the government steps in to protect them, millions of flat dwellers around the country will suddenly find themselves paying to fix the country’s enormous building safety crisis.
This plan appears to have the support of the Treasury – which has long been terrified of the enormous cost of post-Grenfell remediation landing on the state’s balance sheet – and looks set to be announced at the Budget on March 3.
Unable to obtain a mortgage and sell, leaseholders are stuck living in potential deathtraps
The leaseholders who are set to pick up the tab, though, are not happy. The proposal has been branded a ‘cladding tax’ and social media is alive with outraged flat owners who are furious at the prospect of being lumbered with the final bill for the institutional failure of the building industry and the government supposed to regulate it.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cladding-t...
Meanwhile lots of personal accounts like this in the media.....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55748746
Must be a nightmare for all concerned.
“ The government’s current proposal began when Michael Wade, an insurance guru, was drafted by the Cabinet Office to help find a solution to the cladding problem. The idea he is reported to have thought up is as follows: loans will be provided to the companies which own the freeholds of the blocks requiring remediation. These loans will be backed by government to hold down the interest rate and will be spread over a period of at least 30 years.
But in reality it won’t be the freehold companies who repay the loans. Instead, they will be allowed to pass on the costs to the building’s leaseholders through service charges. Unless the government steps in to protect them, millions of flat dwellers around the country will suddenly find themselves paying to fix the country’s enormous building safety crisis.
This plan appears to have the support of the Treasury – which has long been terrified of the enormous cost of post-Grenfell remediation landing on the state’s balance sheet – and looks set to be announced at the Budget on March 3.
Unable to obtain a mortgage and sell, leaseholders are stuck living in potential deathtraps
The leaseholders who are set to pick up the tab, though, are not happy. The proposal has been branded a ‘cladding tax’ and social media is alive with outraged flat owners who are furious at the prospect of being lumbered with the final bill for the institutional failure of the building industry and the government supposed to regulate it.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cladding-t...
Meanwhile lots of personal accounts like this in the media.....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55748746
Must be a nightmare for all concerned.
BlackLabel said:
According to the Spectator this is the route the government may go down.
“ The government’s current proposal began when Michael Wade, an insurance guru, was drafted by the Cabinet Office to help find a solution to the cladding problem. The idea he is reported to have thought up is as follows: loans will be provided to the companies which own the freeholds of the blocks requiring remediation. These loans will be backed by government to hold down the interest rate and will be spread over a period of at least 30 years.
But in reality it won’t be the freehold companies who repay the loans. Instead, they will be allowed to pass on the costs to the building’s leaseholders through service charges. Unless the government steps in to protect them, millions of flat dwellers around the country will suddenly find themselves paying to fix the country’s enormous building safety crisis.
This plan appears to have the support of the Treasury – which has long been terrified of the enormous cost of post-Grenfell remediation landing on the state’s balance sheet – and looks set to be announced at the Budget on March 3.
Unable to obtain a mortgage and sell, leaseholders are stuck living in potential deathtraps
The leaseholders who are set to pick up the tab, though, are not happy. The proposal has been branded a ‘cladding tax’ and social media is alive with outraged flat owners who are furious at the prospect of being lumbered with the final bill for the institutional failure of the building industry and the government supposed to regulate it.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cladding-t...
Meanwhile lots of personal accounts like this in the media.....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55748746
Must be a nightmare for all concerned.
So, as ever, the little guy - who had no hand whatsoever in creating the problem - ends up taking it in the shorts, while the people who were actually responsible drive off into the sunset with a boot full of cash and a smile on their face.“ The government’s current proposal began when Michael Wade, an insurance guru, was drafted by the Cabinet Office to help find a solution to the cladding problem. The idea he is reported to have thought up is as follows: loans will be provided to the companies which own the freeholds of the blocks requiring remediation. These loans will be backed by government to hold down the interest rate and will be spread over a period of at least 30 years.
But in reality it won’t be the freehold companies who repay the loans. Instead, they will be allowed to pass on the costs to the building’s leaseholders through service charges. Unless the government steps in to protect them, millions of flat dwellers around the country will suddenly find themselves paying to fix the country’s enormous building safety crisis.
This plan appears to have the support of the Treasury – which has long been terrified of the enormous cost of post-Grenfell remediation landing on the state’s balance sheet – and looks set to be announced at the Budget on March 3.
Unable to obtain a mortgage and sell, leaseholders are stuck living in potential deathtraps
The leaseholders who are set to pick up the tab, though, are not happy. The proposal has been branded a ‘cladding tax’ and social media is alive with outraged flat owners who are furious at the prospect of being lumbered with the final bill for the institutional failure of the building industry and the government supposed to regulate it.”
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-cladding-t...
Meanwhile lots of personal accounts like this in the media.....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55748746
Must be a nightmare for all concerned.
Is the UK the only country suffering from this faulty cladding? I would have thought the same materials would have been used in many other countries too, especially around the EU. Are they all having to retrofit to make safe? Will be one hell of a job supplying that much material I'd have thought!
A friend can't sell her flat because they can't even get a surveyor out to check what the cladding is, let alone think about replacing it, if required.
It's not just people with dangerous cladding who are unable to sell, its any building over whatever height which now requires a certificate for the mortgage company.
Although it is entirely scandalous that manufactures were able to sell, and builders were able to fit, cladding which were not compliant with the rules and then get away without any responsibility for replacing it. No doubt the companies who sold and fitted then illegal cladding in the first place will then get the contracts and orders to replace it. Who says crime doesn't pay?
It's not just people with dangerous cladding who are unable to sell, its any building over whatever height which now requires a certificate for the mortgage company.
Although it is entirely scandalous that manufactures were able to sell, and builders were able to fit, cladding which were not compliant with the rules and then get away without any responsibility for replacing it. No doubt the companies who sold and fitted then illegal cladding in the first place will then get the contracts and orders to replace it. Who says crime doesn't pay?
BlackLabel said:
Must be a nightmare for all concerned.
Naah, not for everyone:dudleybloke said:
The cladding manufacturers, builders, regulators and their insurers should be paying for it not the end user who had no part of the decision to use the wrong product.
Whoever signed it off should pay.
Trying to get any money out of that lot would be like getting blood from a stone. It'd be an interesting thing to see, if the government was able to chase those people, where would the conga lines of finger pointing end up heading towards.Whoever signed it off should pay.
Another poster above wondered if other countries have this drama. The answer is yes. Australia does. Solutions? In Melbourne at least, the government ended up throwing more money at the Metropolitan Fire Brigade to improve response times in case a cladding fire started.... There have been some towering infernos in the Middle East which have been fuelled by dodgy cladding. Probably more around the world but this stuff is last weeks news now...
Prime Minister Johnsons government should have dealt with this by now. The tories can find billions to waste on sub-standard PPE etc that they conveniently ordered from their chums but can't sort out unsafe building materials to ensure the residents are safe? A national disgrace IMO.
But once again, Boris promises much and delivers little - https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/johnson-...
And who would trust Robert Jenrick when it came to money??!!???
But once again, Boris promises much and delivers little - https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/johnson-...
And who would trust Robert Jenrick when it came to money??!!???
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