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How many of the "affected" blocks have spontaneously combusted since Grenfell ?
Government 5 : 0 Leaseholders
- Thread starter SirGalahad
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How does this legislation indemnify the builders for responsibility of fitting faulty cladding? Its my understanding that the legislation clarifies the fact that the building owner is responsible for the fire safety of the building and that they can pass the costs on to the leaseholders in the same way as they would do with any other form of maintenance. The building owners, lease holders and management companies are entirely within their rights to pursue the builders and cladding suppliers for the costs of correcting the faulty cladding.
The government has also put in place a finance scheme to allow leaseholders of buildings not covered by the £5 billion fund to repay the costs of the rectification with a payment cap of £50 per month. I'm sure that once the work is done, lawyers will find ways of attaching that debt to the property to allow the owners to sell on the property with the on going repayments attached in a similar way to the maintenance charges you accept with a leasehold.
Is this any different to buying a property and then finding its riddled with asbestos or starts to subside because of a tree in the garden? The owner of the the property would be liable for those repairs, how is this any different? If either of the two scenarios were due to poor workmanship or defective materials on the part of a builder or a contractor, the property owner would pursue the builder or contractor to recover costs where possible and at no time would we expect the government to cover those costs.
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It is different as they are the owners of the freehold- they bear the cost. In this case the freeholders passes on the cost to the leaseholders.
The freeholder is not responsible for the costs, they can access the fund to make repairs and then charge the leaseholders for this, so they don't pay but end up benefiting from the repairs.
The fund only covers cladding and not other remediation work.
The issue is due to poor regulation and poor buildings - how is the leaseholders responsible for that?
Someone has to pay - who should it be? Freeholders, Leaseholders or Developers?
I think that in the case of the cladding that wasn't fit for purpose, the cost should be passed back on to the cladding manufacturer if they mis-sold it. If the developers fitted it wrongly, then the developer should pay. But i think the freeholder and leaseholder should pay for the remedial works and then legally reclaim the money from the developers and cladding manufacturers. I don't think the taxpayer should have to pay, other than to provide financial bridging loans where the freeholder and leaseholder can't afford the upfront cost.
Don't get me wrong, i am sympathetic to the leaseholders who now are facing big bills (albeit backed by government loans to make the bills affordable). However, there will be a whole chain of private companies, including PI insurers, who were involved in this work and should take the liability. However, if the government fund the remedial works and there is no incentive for the leaseholders to commence legal action, the taxpayer will end up with the bill.
St Gobain have a lot of mis-selling questions to answer, but so do the architects, developers and installers, all of whom will have had PI insurance that will still apply, even if the company no longer exists.
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Lower has it about right. The question is pretty simple; where does the fault lie? If a specified product is fit for purpose at the time of specification and a builder follows a specification it's hard to see how the builder should be held accountable afterwards. As simple comparisons are the order of the day; a plumber fits a boiler, in accordance with manufacturer's specification, which then kills a family of 5 due to a manufacturing fault. Who we going to sue?
We really need to know exactly where the fault lay with this. And, somebody needs to be seriously asking why it is costing two hundred grand a year to provide a so-called 'waking watch'.
We really need to know exactly where the fault lay with this. And, somebody needs to be seriously asking why it is costing two hundred grand a year to provide a so-called 'waking watch'.
Better question: How many flats have not been able to be sold since Grenfell?
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Why would it be a better question ?
For a long time, I have held to the view that the safety of homes and buildings should not be left to the whim of builders and materials suppliers. It should be officially regulated in some way.
Materials and techniques should be tested and validated, and only if they pass should they be "approved" for use.
For example, materials and components should be tested for flammability.
If a new method or material was found to behave badly, for example in a fire, its use could be suspended until it had been tested and certified or banned.
We could give ownership of the process to a Government Minister. We could perhaps call him the "Minister for Housing." And he could publish, revise and authorise the regulations. We could call them the "Regulations for Buildings." He would have responsibility.
If such a Minister failed to fulfill his duties, he could be sacked.
It's such a good idea that I can't think why nobody thought of it before.
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The Government is not free from this as it set the standards / regulations and if these companies met those standards, only to be told after the fact those standards were indeed not fit for purpose - then who is liable?
It is a legal quagmire. The Government has to resolve this as it is the one with the most resources and ability to do so. Leaseholding is antiquiated and need to end - but I suspect whatever happens from this - nothing will really change.
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The Government enacted legislation making it a requirement that the flats in question required around the clock fire marshalls or "waking watch" to ensure that if there is a fire people are evacuated immediately. It's a sticking plaster and not a long term solution.
You are a one hate filled individual.
Yes but, as you will probably know, the building regulations are nowhere near as detailed and prescriptive as some people think. The regulation on fire spread is a short paragraph; twenty five or thirty words. Most people think it says you can't do this and you can't do that and you mustn't use so and so material. It doesn't, it just says the building should adequately resist fire... blah, blah.
The experts are the people that make a product. They should know how the material behaves in different circumstances and should be able to say where it should and shouldn't be used. As a designer of buildings the process is to identify the functional requirements and consider the available materials. I can't fire test things to make sure they're ok, and neither can a builder. If the manufacturer says it's ok then I have to rely on that.
The experts are the people that make a product. They should know how the material behaves in different circumstances and should be able to say where it should and shouldn't be used. As a designer of buildings the process is to identify the functional requirements and consider the available materials. I can't fire test things to make sure they're ok, and neither can a builder. If the manufacturer says it's ok then I have to rely on that.
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https://www.ft.com/content/e9d53af5-ab1b-45cf-92b7-da89045225d6
They are some of the key questions that have haunted the marathon inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster — the fire that ripped through a west London high-rise block in 2017, killing 72 people. How did so much combustible cladding end up attached to the outside of the building? These were materials that were supposed to improve the lives of residents by insulating properties and hence cutting their heating bills. And how could regulators have missed the flaws that led to so many deaths? Well, now the answers are starting to come in and they are not pretty for the industry. It’s a story that has shades of the Volkswagen scandal over diesel emissions, involving regulatory arbitrage and rigged tests. Eager to seize a large slice of a fast-growing “green” market, cladding manufacturers exploited weak regulatory oversight to push for undeserved safety ratings. Developers happy to cut corners asked too few questions. This might have seemed a good way of driving booming sales. But it was reckless. Indeed, knowing what came next makes it hard to read the evidence regarding some players, such as the Irish cladding giant Kingspan, without a shudder of disbelief. Take the messages between members of its technical team a year before the fire, which joke about how they managed to get the company’s K15 insulation categorised as “class 0” — allowing it to be used in buildings over 18 metres — in part by submitting for testing a different material to the one being sold. “Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho. LOL,” says one. “WHAT. We lied? Honest opinion now,” responds the other. “Yeahhhh,” says the first, before adding, “All lies, mate.” Asked about these messages at the inquiry, Kingspan’s head of regulatory affairs said he did not believe the company had lied and could not explain “why they’re describing it as such in that way”.
Nor was Kingspan — whose product represented only a small quantity of the cladding materials at Grenfell — alone in allegedly pushing boundaries. Celotex, a subsidiary of Saint Gobain of France, which supplied much of the insulation, allegedly manipulated tests for its RS5000 insulation by concealing non-combustible materials. RS5000 was withdrawn from sale days after the Grenfell fire. It is for the police to investigate any criminal culpability of those involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell. But apart from the loss of life, what is clear is that an almighty mess has been created. Estimates suggest that around 5 per cent of the private homes in England could be clad in dangerous materials, rendering them unmortgageable. MPs on the housing select committee found that repairs could cost £15bn. The government has set aside just £1.6bn in grant funding to help. Simple equity suggests that the “polluter pays” principle should operate. But, astonishingly, a UK government adviser, Michael Wade, has reportedly come up with a plan that would help leaseholders pay the cost of repairing the damage through a loan scheme. Since the Grenfell fire, five of Britain’s largest housebuilders — all of which have had cladding problems — have reported profits of £9bn, their dividends and management bonuses engorged by public subsidy through the “Help to Buy” scheme. Celotex and Kingspan are beneficiaries of the UK’s taxpayer-supported £2bn “Green Energy Grant” programme. Having raked in public money, it seems extraordinary that these companies should be able to make more profits without clearing up the mess.
Sense may yet prevail. Another restitution scheme has been proposed that would send the bill to those more responsible, such as the developers and cladders. On Thursday, the government said it would expect the building industry to “contribute” to any solution. Kingspan’s 2019 accounts contain a 14 page section proclaiming its “Planet Passionate” mission to help the world to get to net zero. Of Grenfell, not a word. Corporations increasingly like to trumpet their commitment to ethics and good citizenship. Few now claim to subscribe to Milton Friedman’s 1970 doctrine that “the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. Events like the Grenfell disaster are a reminder that we are less far from Friedman’s famous dictum than we might like to believe.
They are some of the key questions that have haunted the marathon inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster — the fire that ripped through a west London high-rise block in 2017, killing 72 people. How did so much combustible cladding end up attached to the outside of the building? These were materials that were supposed to improve the lives of residents by insulating properties and hence cutting their heating bills. And how could regulators have missed the flaws that led to so many deaths? Well, now the answers are starting to come in and they are not pretty for the industry. It’s a story that has shades of the Volkswagen scandal over diesel emissions, involving regulatory arbitrage and rigged tests. Eager to seize a large slice of a fast-growing “green” market, cladding manufacturers exploited weak regulatory oversight to push for undeserved safety ratings. Developers happy to cut corners asked too few questions. This might have seemed a good way of driving booming sales. But it was reckless. Indeed, knowing what came next makes it hard to read the evidence regarding some players, such as the Irish cladding giant Kingspan, without a shudder of disbelief. Take the messages between members of its technical team a year before the fire, which joke about how they managed to get the company’s K15 insulation categorised as “class 0” — allowing it to be used in buildings over 18 metres — in part by submitting for testing a different material to the one being sold. “Doesn’t actually get class 0 when we test the whole product tho. LOL,” says one. “WHAT. We lied? Honest opinion now,” responds the other. “Yeahhhh,” says the first, before adding, “All lies, mate.” Asked about these messages at the inquiry, Kingspan’s head of regulatory affairs said he did not believe the company had lied and could not explain “why they’re describing it as such in that way”.
Nor was Kingspan — whose product represented only a small quantity of the cladding materials at Grenfell — alone in allegedly pushing boundaries. Celotex, a subsidiary of Saint Gobain of France, which supplied much of the insulation, allegedly manipulated tests for its RS5000 insulation by concealing non-combustible materials. RS5000 was withdrawn from sale days after the Grenfell fire. It is for the police to investigate any criminal culpability of those involved in the refurbishment of Grenfell. But apart from the loss of life, what is clear is that an almighty mess has been created. Estimates suggest that around 5 per cent of the private homes in England could be clad in dangerous materials, rendering them unmortgageable. MPs on the housing select committee found that repairs could cost £15bn. The government has set aside just £1.6bn in grant funding to help. Simple equity suggests that the “polluter pays” principle should operate. But, astonishingly, a UK government adviser, Michael Wade, has reportedly come up with a plan that would help leaseholders pay the cost of repairing the damage through a loan scheme. Since the Grenfell fire, five of Britain’s largest housebuilders — all of which have had cladding problems — have reported profits of £9bn, their dividends and management bonuses engorged by public subsidy through the “Help to Buy” scheme. Celotex and Kingspan are beneficiaries of the UK’s taxpayer-supported £2bn “Green Energy Grant” programme. Having raked in public money, it seems extraordinary that these companies should be able to make more profits without clearing up the mess.
Sense may yet prevail. Another restitution scheme has been proposed that would send the bill to those more responsible, such as the developers and cladders. On Thursday, the government said it would expect the building industry to “contribute” to any solution. Kingspan’s 2019 accounts contain a 14 page section proclaiming its “Planet Passionate” mission to help the world to get to net zero. Of Grenfell, not a word. Corporations increasingly like to trumpet their commitment to ethics and good citizenship. Few now claim to subscribe to Milton Friedman’s 1970 doctrine that “the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”. Events like the Grenfell disaster are a reminder that we are less far from Friedman’s famous dictum than we might like to believe.
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Regulatory failure and weak oversight for both the manufacturers and the builders.
Why is it that we have consumer protections for buying cars, medical equipment but when it comes to buying a home its caveat emptor?
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