Deadline urged to make buildings covered in dangerous cladding safe

LONDON: A target date must be set for work – costing billions – to make thousands of buildings covered in dangerous cladding safe, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has said.

Up to 7,229 buildings across England are yet to be identified and some might never be, the National Audit Office (NAO) said, as it warned completing works to make all buildings safe at an estimated cost of £16 billion might not be achieved in the next decade.

Campaigners have repeatedly criticised the slow progress of such work – known as remediation – in the seven years since the Grenfell Tower fire claimed the lives of 72 people in 2017.

The NAO has also warned of the need to ensure taxpayer costs are kept down and that developers pay under a new levy which is not expected to start collecting until next autumn.

Delivering her Budget last week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged that the Government will “make progress on our commitment to accelerate the remediation of homes following the findings of the Grenfell Inquiry, with £1 billion of investment to remove dangerous cladding next year”.

The NAO report, published on Monday, said the impacts of dangerous cladding “have extended far beyond the immediate victims of the Grenfell fire, with many people suffering significant financial and emotional distress”.

It noted that on top of living with the fear of fire, there have been costly bills for remediation and some residents have paid for so-called waking watches to patrol buildings while waiting for cladding to be removed. The NAO said the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has estimated somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 buildings will need remediating – made safe.

The latest official figures, up to the end of September 2024, showed there were 4,821 residential buildings of at least 11 metres in height identified with unsafe cladding, up by 50 since previous month.

This total is thought to account for more than a quarter of a million individual homes.

Of the 4,821 buildings identified, only half had either started or completed remediation works. The NAO report stated: “Pace has been a persistent concern and remediation within the portfolio is progressing more slowly than MHCLG expected.”

The department’s modelling estimates an end date of 2035 for completing cladding remediation, but the NAO warned this will be “challenging to achieve”.

Among its recommendations, the watchdog said the department “should publish a target date by which it expects all affected buildings to be remediated based on its understanding of the number of buildings to be remediated and the speed at which it expects building owners and developers to complete works”.

This should be continuously reviewed to keep track of “whether the date remains achievable as the portfolio progresses”, it added.