A ‘Leaseholders Together’ Rally will take place at 12.00 on 15 July 2021 in Parliament Square.
Over recent decades, weak and gameable building regulations, with no oversight of what was actually being built, have enabled serious malpractice in the construction industry, leaving thousands of buildings across the country unsafe or potentially unsafe. Government failed to act decisively, dragging millions of people into an unprecedented building safety crisis. Meanwhile, the construction industry has made billions in profits since the Grenfell tragedy.
From at least 700,000 people initially trapped in this nightmare, the Government has now dragged millions of people into this crisis through the issuance of consolidated safety guidance in January 2020.
What started as a cladding scandal has become a building safety crisis, with average costs to fix “non-cladding” defects estimated to be c.£25,500 per leaseholder, and sometimes considerably more. Buildings cannot be made half-safe.
The cost to resolve this crisis has been estimated at £15bn by the House of Commons Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. In June 2020 they said “Funding of remediation should reflect where blame lies. It is clear that there have been widespread failures. What is also clear, however, is that residents are in no way to blame, and it is our view that they should bear none of the cost of remediation.” So far, the Government has chosen to only commit £5.1bn, of which developers are to contribute a tiny £2bn over ten years, through a levy. Leaseholders are being forced to pay the remaining costs.
Many leaseholders have already spent thousands of pounds on interim measures, such as the often-ineffective waking watch, and exorbitant insurance premiums, which have soared hundreds of percent over premiums from previous years – right now, many are paying sums equating to a second mortgage on these. Some leaseholders have already gone bankrupt and lost their homes.
