Are half a million of us living in dangerous buildings?

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Beautiful flat - but many like it around the country may be blighted by building failures


This week, the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA) revealed that more than half a million people around the country could be living in unsafe buildings that met the standards set by building control when they were built. The shock findings are the result of a survey of apartment buildings in the UK that reveal the massive scale of the cladding crisis.

In a call to action, cladding campaigners, residents, property managers, professional bodies including the Institute of Residential Property Management, and the UK?s largest freeholders have now formed a coalition to request a multibillion-pound fund to remediate unsafe buildings.

In an open letter to the new Chancellor, the group has called on the Government to step in, following failures in the building safety regime that date back decades. As we?ve blogged several times in recent months, leaseholders are being left to pay the price, which is likely to run into the billions.  This is grossly unfair and must be tackled urgently at government level.

The freeholders who have signed today?s letter, are coordinating remediation work on buildings with ACM cladding in every major city in the UK. But the process has opened a can of worms, revealing numerous additional safety issues that could take decades to fix. In the meantime, flat owners are left high and dry in dangerous blocks, with homes they can?t sell.

Given the scale of the task, the group is calling for immediate, decisive action so that these buildings can be made safe as soon as possible.

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03/09/2020
Author : Mary-Anne Bowring

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