House builders must pay £4bn to help cladding crisis

Housing secretary Michael Gove has told the UK’s housebuilding industry that it must foot the estimated £4 billion bill to replace fire-risk cladding on thousands of towers across the UK.

In a letter to the nations housebuilders, Gove says that the Government is to ‘expose and pursue’ companies who fitted flammable cladding to towers including the UK’s main house builders.

He is also expected to reveal new measures that will make it easier for the estimated 500,000 leaseholders caught up in the scandal to sell their homes.

Although government funding is already in place for taller towers over 18.5 metres, many leaseholders in medium-size towers remain trapped as huge remediation and other costs related to cladding mean homeowners are unable to sell or re-mortgage their properties.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities which Gove leads has been under huge pressure from campaigners and MPs from across the political spectrum to help these leaseholders, many of whom have been forced to take out huge loans to pay for cladding remediation.

Gove has told housebuilders and cladding firms that ‘we are coming for you’ and expects them to pay into a voluntary fund for buildings between 11m and 18.5 metres high.

The details of the letter:

In the letter, the Secretary of State asks companies to agree to:

• make financial contributions to a dedicated fund to cover the full outstanding cost to remediate unsafe cladding on 11-18 metre buildings, currently estimated to be £4 billion
• fund and undertake all necessary remediation of buildings over 11 metres that they have played a role in developing
• provide comprehensive information on all buildings over 11 metres which have historic safety defects and which they have played a part in constructing in the last 30 years

You can read the letter in full here