Opinion from LGA

Responding to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on cladding remediation, Lord Porter of the Local Government Association (LGA) said:

“The LGA shares the committee’s view that three years after the Grenfell Tower 
fire, the remediation of dangerous buildings is proceeding too slowly. Social landlords have been quick to address the issue, but progress in the private sector has been unacceptably slow.

“We have been urging government to act on non-ACM dangerous cladding for over two years and we are pleased that the committee shares our view that the fund announced in the Budget, although positive, is insufficient. Without adequate public funding for the remediation of local authority-owned blocks, councils will not be able to deliver the new homes the government wants or fund improvement programmes.

“The £15bn figure the committee puts on the cost of addressing all fire safety defects in every high-risk residential building is a horrifying indictment of the failed building safety system in this country, but does not come as a surprise. 

“This is a crisis resulting from decades of inadequate building safety regulation under successive governments of all political colours. It needs to be addressed in a cost-effective manner, rather than through the piecemeal identification and remediation of flaw upon flaw in the built environment.”

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