'They are trapped' - 20,000 in Yorkshire still living in homes with dangerous cladding, Labour claims

Those trapped in flats across Yorkshire, unable to move or sell their homes, were given as examples by shadow housing minister Thangam Debbonaire today, as Labour opened a debate in the Commons calling for a national task force to be established to “get a grip on the deepening cladding crisis”.

Ms Debbonaire spoke about 28-year-old Hayley Tillotson, from Leeds, who is believed to be the first to have been made bankrupt because of the cladding scandal.

“Hayley was a first-time buyer in Leeds,” Mr Debbonaire said.

“She bought her flat through an affordable housing scheme, designed to help people on low incomes take the first step onto the housing ladder. After moving in, Hayley was told the roof of her building was covered in dangerous cladding, similar to that used on Grenfell Tower.

“Further inspection threw up more problems – brickwork, insulation, balconies and possibly firebreaks. Every month Hayley faced £300 additional charges for what is called ‘waking watch’ – 24-hour fire safety patrols that give little confidence but cost dearly. This £300 was as much as her mortgage and she just couldn’t afford it.

“The terms of her mortgage meant she couldn’t move or rent out her flat. Facing mounting bills for repairs, fire alarms, and the looming threat of the costs of fixing the building, Hayley declared bankruptcy.

“A first-time buyer so recently, Hayley would now struggle to take out a loan to buy a car.”

The issue of dangerous cladding came to light after 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire in London in June 2017.

An inquiry - currently paused due to Covid - was launched to learn lessons, and some remedial work has been done on both cladding the same as that on Grenfell Tower, but also other dangerous cladding.

Housing Minister Chris Pincher said "around 95 per cent of all high-rise ACM buildings identified before the beginning of last year across both the public and the private sectors, are either fully remediated or have seen work commence on site".

But analysis by Labour taking found an estimated 20,462 people in Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield, Bradford, Sheffield, Doncaster, Calderdale, and Kirklees were still living in homes identified as either being covered with aluminium composite cladding (ACM) - the same as that seen on Grenfell Tower - which had not yet been fully remedied, or potentially unsafe non-ACM cladding systems registered with the Government’s Building Safety Fund.

And this, Ms Debbonaire said, included “key workers, such as NHS junior doctor Will working on the Covid front line in Sheffield, facing costs of £52,000 and doubling service charge each month”.

Labour called for the Government to remove the cladding by paying for it up front, with costs recouped through legal action against those responsible.

And Ms Debbonaire added: “People cannot continue living in unsafe homes, leaseholders should not face mounting bills for a crisis they didn’t cause.”

Leeds Central Labour MP Hilary Benn, who has been a vocal campaigner on the issues, added: “As the outer layers have been peeled back on each block to reveal the full horror underneath, their homes are fire traps, they're worthless, they cannot borrow against them, they cannot sell them.

“They are trapped. Trapped by waking watch bills, trapped by rising insurance, and trapped by the fear that they will be told they must pay to fix this, even though they are not in any way responsible.”

He said: “The impact on the mental health of my constituents is enormous, because every day they wake up and are reminded of this nightmare with no apparent way out.”

And he added: “This is a story of monumental regulatory failure, a story of flats being built as cheaply as possible, in many cases without even complying with the building regulations.”

Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton Kevin Hollinrake said the cost to fix the issues would be much greater than the funding which had so far been committed.

He said: “The reality is, this has been systemic failure over decades, that’s the only thing that could have contributed to a scandal on this scale.”

Mr Pincher said: “There is no quick fix, if there was then we’d have done it long ago.”

He said the Government was trying to develop a financial solution to protect leaseholders from high costs to deal with unsafe cladding, but he said: “It is complex, it involves many parties, leaseholders with different leases, developers, warranty holders, the insurance industry, the mortgage lenders, the owners themselves.”

He highlighted more than £1bn allocated to improve the safety of buildings before saying of a remedy to protect leaseholders: “We have to bring forward a solution that is right and proper, that demands of owners and developers that they put right the problems and defects they cause, that is fair to leaseholders who should not have to carry unfair costs for problems that they didn’t cause or envisage, and that is fair to the taxpayer – who is already shouldering a significant burden in the of many buildings.”

Mr Pincher said a further announcement will be made “very shortly”, adding in his conclusion: “We will work to restore the inalienable right for everyone in this country to live somewhere which is decent, which is secure and, above all, which is safe, a place that they can rightly and proudly call home.”

Mr Pincher highlighted a £30m fund designed to reduce the need for waking watches in England, and he said the Government “will not tolerate unnecessary delays” to remediation work.

Michael Mullin, who lives in Hanover Tower in Sheffield, where unsafe cladding has now been removed, said developers could not use the excuse that building regulations were not clear.

He said Hanover Tower was the only highrise in the country where the unsafe cladding used was different to that agreed during the planning stages during refurbishment, and a Sheffield City Council report released last year - after three years - said this was likely because of the difference in design of the block.

He said: “The material that was used was banned everywhere else, the only place they were really using it was in the UK.

“That’s why I’m saying there is nothing unclear about the building regulations, what happened to common sense? What happened to the bleeding obvious?”

But he said he felt Labour was “political point scoring” and the detail was lost in the overall response to the scandal.