https://staging.leaseholdknowledge.com/tag/uk-cladding-action-group UK Cladding Action Group was formed to bring together people living in or leasing flats in residential blocks affected by cladding and fire safety issues. SHARE. Rituparna Saha, a leaseholder at the affected Northpoint block in Bromley, south-east London, and founder of the UK Cladding Action Group, which signed the letter, said: “We know naming and shaming freeholders is not going to work. 119. The Birmingham Leaseholder Action Group is one of a number of campaign groups set up to put pressure on those responsible for trapping leaseholders in unsafe buildings. 117. UK Cladding Action Group retweeted. Over the course of 2018, I realised how few rights I had as a leaseholder in a dangerous home. There have rightly been changes in building fire safety regulations following the Grenfell tragedy. Post Grenfell cladding inspections have found hundreds of blocks of flats in England & Wales with faulty or missing fire prevention measures. Government delivers on threat to expose building owners over failure to rectify problem, Last modified on Mon 24 Feb 2020 20.15 GMT. Leaseholders are seeing building insurance premiums rise 10 times to sometimes as much as £350,000 per annum. Grenfell cladding maker knew danger of product 10 years before the tragedy. Over the course of 2018, I realised how few rights I had as a leaseholder in a dangerous home. Where legal action is possible, it is extremely costly, adding to financial pressures on already cash-strapped residents. If the government subsequently finds that developers, building control or other parties are responsible for these defects, it should recover the costs from them. Most leaseholders, including many first-time buyers, cannot afford the bills and as a result, works to fix buildings have not been commissioned. Banks are refusing to lend even on blocks less than 18 metres tall without External Wall Survey forms (. Unlike any consumer durable, which can be returned for a refund or replacement if found to be faulty, there is no such recourse when buying what, for most people, is the most significant purchase of their lives: their home. https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/tag/uk-cladding-action-group Most developers have either sold on the freehold, or liquidated and set up new companies, or simply gone bust. But leaseholders who have been trying in vain for months to get freeholders to pay believe the government should step in and fund the work – a bill that could exceed £2bn. Official website for the #EndOurCladdingScandal campaign Its three founders; Ritu Saha, Rachel Loudain and Will Martin each live in dangerous buildings … 8,934. Chilling new document predicted “70 persons” could be killed in 2007. “The Grenfell tragedy highlighted the dangers of ACM cladding, but it has also revealed a much wider building safety crisis which could affect over half a million people,” said Nigel Glen, the chief executive of Arma. Rituparna Saha, a leaseholder at the affected Northpoint block in Bromley, south-east London, and founder of the UK Cladding Action Group, which … UKCAG has been contacted by leaseholders in distress in over 270 blocks. There are no items to display at the moment. Please wait whilst we update your results... New industry-wide process agreed for valuation of high-rise buildings, Government’s £1bn Building Safety Fund to be launched in May, letter to Robert Jenrick MP of 17 March 2020. However, landlords, property managers and resident groups believe Jenrick’s attempts to shame freeholders will not work. We felt frustrated at the lack of any legal remedies available to us, were disheartened at the lack of support from the government, and were hit with the horrible realisation that leaseholders are legally and financially responsible for fixing catastrophic building safety defects not of our making, on … The government has identified 143 private sector residential buildings with aluminium composite (ACM) cladding similar to Grenfell Tower’s, which have yet to be fixed. UK Cladding Action Group - You and Yours - 25/11/19 - YouTube The UK Cladding Action Group (UKCAG), formed in March 2019, was born out of a collective frustration at the Government’s inaction despite rhetoric post Grenfell. There has been uncertainty about what materials will be allowed under building regulations in the future and some builders and designers are struggling to secure adequate professional indemnity insurance cover in order to carry out works. The statute of limitations meant that even if the developer did exist, there was no way to now hold them to account for their failures, even though many of us only found out about the failures after the statute of limitations had passed. Building warranties also last only for 10 years and this option is therefore not available to many of us. I was facing a personal bill of around £70,000 for fixing cladding, on top of shared bills for fire wardens and temporary alarms that have cost 57 leaseholders £550,000 and counting. The fallout of all this is that leaseholders are now facing huge bills in the tens and hundreds of thousands, for interim fire safety measures, internal fire safety defects and cladding remediation. Please wait a moment while we find what you are looking for…. Its 3 founders; Ritu Saha, Rachel Loudain and Will Martin each live in affected buildings across the UK - Kent, London & Sheffield - and wished to unite leaseholders nationally to call for change from government. A total of 38.3% of residents said they had turned to alcohol to help cope with the stress while 8.7% said they were experiencing suicidal We want the government to understand that decades of faulty or ambiguous building regulations have caused thousands of blocks to be built with significant fire safety defects. In most cases, there was no recourse to the entities that had built these defective buildings: the developers. We are an action group, set up in February 2020, to put pressure on those responsible for trapping leaseholders in unsafe buildings, following the Grenfell tragedy. ITV London. Surveys by the UK Cladding Action Group of residents in private tower blocks with flammable cladding showed that a quarter (25.5%) have sought medical help due to mental health issues, while 15.3% said they were receiving medical attention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_cladding_crisis Social housing has been fixed more rapidly with the help of a £400m government fund, because there is no dispute over who is responsible for the safety of the homes. Something went wrong trying to load these items. We want the government to release funding to remedy all residential buildings with fire safety defects and include in this the costs directly related to these safety failings, such as interim fire safety measures. “It is critical those responsible for remediation take forward action at pace.”. Residents should not be left to pay for remedies to unsafe tower block cladding. “Disappointed with the vote today? Fire will not wait for laws to be changed or until those responsible for this debacle finally take ownership. 25. “Naming and shaming building owners, who are committed to fixing these buildings as quickly as possible, is completely counterproductive,” they said. Flat owners are facing unaffordable bills of up to £100,000 each and will rally in Westminster on Tuesday to demand action from ministers. The UK Cladding Action Group (UKCAG) was born out of a collective frustration at the Government’s inaction despite rhetoric in relation to cladding and internal fire safety defects. A decade later, 72 people died in the Tower. @RagsMartel reports from the Inquiry, on the Arconic witness still refusing to speak. And neither should the government. They include Adriatic Land 3 Limited, a freeholder that is managed by a firm led by David Cameron’s brother-in-law William Astor. The only solution that can be implemented quickly is a political one. Flammable wooden cladding on an apartment complex in Manchester. Others include the UK Cladding Action Group and Manchester Cladiators. The UK Cladding Action Group urged leaseholders to express their anger with the government in the upcoming local elections on 6 May. 1. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, a registered charity and the secretariat of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Leasehold and Commonhold … Nearly three years on from the Grenfell tragedy, we cannot afford further delays. Many residents with unsellable homes and soaring mortgage and insurance costs disagree that freeholders are moving fast enough to fix buildings. https://m.facebook.com/972841706252797/posts/1485084788361817/?d=n On top of the blocks wrapped in ACM cladding identified by the government, the Association of Residential Managing Agents (Arma) believes leaseholders in another 1,375 buildings are at risk from other types of combustible cladding materials including wood and high-pressure laminate. On top of this, the constant retrospective changes have now caused the mortgage and insurance industries to take an extremely risk-averse approach to residential blocks. https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/… It owns buildings including Skyline Central, a high-rise apartment complex in Manchester wrapped in combustible high-pressure laminate cladding. Cladding removal and replacement, and other fire safety issues raised by Grenfell, are resulting in life-changing bills for leaseholders, through no fault of their own. More details on Scottish cladding action group PUBLISHED 15 July 2020. Resident Cerys Owen, who set up Wales Leaseholder Action Group, said the majority of internal remediation work had been undertaken by the developer, Taylor Wimpey, but external cladding … However, waiting to do this risks lives and the priority must be to make buildings safe. “The government saying building owners should do the right thing doesn’t help because legally the leaseholders are liable and they can’t afford it, so with the best will in the world you can’t remediate,” Glen said. Last week ... HRSAG added that the combination of Scottish and UK law ‘has had the effect of leaving the owners of a property, collectively, responsible for investigating and if required, removing any combustible material’ on or in external wall systems. Mar 10. The move delivers on a threat last month by the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick to name recalcitrant freeholders almost 1,000 days after the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives. Ritu Saha is a co-founder of the UK Cladding Action Group. Ritu Saha is a co-founder of the UK Cladding Action Group. Affected leaseholders, freeholders and managing agents from across the country wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, on Monday to demand funds to tackle “one of the biggest safety crises in British history”. In early 2019, along with two other leaseholders in Sheffield and London, I set up the. Leasehold agreements show costs fall on the leaseholder, not freeholder, an arrangement upheld by property tribunals. Please wait a moment while we find what you are looking for… They lead the two cities with the most affected blocks. Following the Secretary of State’s announcement on 10 February of additional funding for cladding remediation, the Committee will take evidence from MHCLG, the UK Cladding Action Group, LGA and others. The government has “named and shamed” five building owners who have not fixed dangerous cladding on their properties, describing their behaviour as “egregious”. “If they do not act swiftly, we will work with local councils to bring necessary enforcement action immediately,” said Jenrick. We found out that our home was inherently unsafe, had been built with all kinds of dangerous materials like aluminium composite material and high-pressure laminate cladding, and also had compartmentation issues, which cause fire to spread rapidly between floors and flats due to lack of fire breaks. We know they are not legally responsible for paying for this.”. They said the freeholder had provided almost £800,000 to prevent the cost of fire safety works falling on resident, was in talks with the construction company and has applied to the government’s cladding fund for money to fix the building. End Our Cladding Scandal. But while new regulations normally apply from the date they come into force, in this instance, the changes have meant that many buildings built across decades in this country that were once considered safe, are now no longer so. A spokesperson for HomeGround, the company led by Astor, said it was disappointed to be named by the government. Jenrick also named Chaplair Limited, a company that has freehold investments worth more than £8m, Grangewalk Developments Limited, RMB 102 Limited and STG Management (London) Limited, which is a dormant company, according to Companies House. We are calling on the government to recognise that people’s safety must come first. No legal recourse is available for most leaseholders stuck in these unsafe buildings. Cladding building owners told not to talk to press - BBC News AUTHOR . @itvlondon. Since forming in early 2019 UKCAG … Enable hls playback. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, are expected to attend. “These buildings are being fixed by building owners and managing agents as quickly as possible but, without government support, the process could take decades and leave leaseholders with life-changing bills on top of the anxiety that has already been caused.”. Developers have been free to interpret regulations to use the most unsafe materials possible and build to the lowest possible standards, and local authorities and building control inspectors cannot now be held legally accountable for signing off unsafe buildings. In early 2019, along with two other leaseholders in Sheffield and London, I set up the UK Cladding Action Group (UKCAG). So far leaseholders in just one private building have successfully applied for full funding to fix their homes from a £200m government fund for private buildings. 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