Inside Housing – Home – Building safety campaigners warn ‘hardly anything has changed’ as they issue fresh demands to government

The campaign’s demands include a “significantly increase” in the pace of remediation work, with a commitment for a remediation plan to be in place for all buildings by June 2024. 
While significant progress has been made in remediating buildings with aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding, with funding first announced for social housing in 2018 and private blocks in 2019, work to remove other materials are moving at a glacial pace.
Currently, 3,487 tall buildings with dangerous cladding other than ACM have been registered for public funding, but work has started on just 263 and it has been completed on only 37. 
For medium-rise buildings (up to 8,890 are believed to be affected), a funding programme has not even opened. 
Buildings below 11m in height do not qualify for government support and leaseholders have no protection from costs, despite insurers and risk assessors recommending that remediation is necessary for many of these buildings. 
In other properties, work is being delayed by cost, a lack of skilled workers such as surveyors, and disputes over who is responsible – with new building safety laws so far only resulting in protracted litigation. 
Because leaseholders are deemed ineligible for protection if they own more than three properties, works will also be held up where these small private landlords are unable to find the astronomical sums to cover their share of the costs. 
The campaign has five asks – listed below – which include calls for comprehensive standards to risk assess buildings, an increased pace to works and protection for all leaseholders. 
Giles Grover, a spokesperson for the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, said: “Six years after Grenfell, one year after [housing secretary] Michael Gove changed the law and told the public that leaseholders were now protected, hardly anything has changed on the ground. 
“The vast majority of us are still trapped in unsafe homes, still unable to sell, still without any clue when this nightmare will end. We’re still going to have to pay to fix issues we didn’t create, and some people who have been horribly labelled as non-qualifying leaseholders, still face ruinous bills because the government has decided some leaseholders are more innocent than others.
“Nowhere near enough has been done to hold the companies that caused this mess to account, despite Mr Gove promising this would happen. 
“If this government continues to refuse to protect us and ensure buildings are made safe quickly, we will keep fighting until we have one that understands fairness and what ‘doing the right thing’ actually means.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “This government has taken significant steps to make buildings safe, and to make sure that those responsible pay.
“We are investing more than £5 billion to remediate unsafe cladding, and through our developer contract almost 50 of the country’s largest developers have agreed to fix their own buildings. We continue to pursue wrongdoers and those who fail their leaseholders and tenants.
“We have protected leaseholders through the Building Safety Act, and created the new Building Safety Regulator to oversee a culture of higher standards throughout our built environment. We are working with lenders and insurers to make sure leaseholders are treated fairly, and to give them the peace of mind they deserve.
“There is more to do, and our work continues – we will work closely with End Our Cladding Scandal to bring this crisis to an end. No one should have to live in an unsafe building.”



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