Time for some facts about building safety in the UK, as there's a lot of misconceptions in the media:

1. Just 5% of dangerous cladding is ACM

2. Cladding is only one issue. Most buildings find fire safety issues inside as well. Eg, missing fire stops in internal walls.

3. 9 out of 10 buildings are failing their surveys with significant issues identified. Meaning, if you are reading this and live in an 18m+ building that will need a survey there's a 90% chance you are impacted.

That's a lot of the population who doesn't know yet.

4. Most issues (eg in my building) are found inside the walls, where corners could be cut and developers didn't think it would be spotted. Buyers couldn't have identified this when they purchased without taking the walls apart.

Developers cut corners and profited from it.

5. If your building is over 6 yrs old, you're probably out of luck to pursue the developer to fix it, due to statute of limitation under DPA 1972.

So you could build a building with straw in the walls (because profit), and if it's not noticed for 6 yrs you got away with it.

6. The freeholder can usually pass all costs under the leasehold agreement to the leaseholders. This means the cost of rectifying eventually and unfairly fall to leaseholders.

7. UK government has not produced any proper legislative response to this. The draft Building Safety Bill actually will make it easier for freeholders to demand remediation costs from leaseholders.

8. If there's a case for developers to fix block, they invariably argue against it and delay the work. Interim safety measures end up costing as much as fixing the building. These costs fall to leaseholders, not the developers.

There's no incentive for developers not to delay

9. Govt response of telling parties to 'do right thing' and stating that 'leaseholders shouldn't pay' achieves nothing without legislation.

These buildings costs millions of pounds to fix, so unless law is passed to enshrine this principle, leaseholders will bear the costs.

10. The level of defects found in so far has insurers and mortgage providers so worried, they now won't lend on many blocks below 18m without surveys being undertaken.

This is grinding the UK housing market to a halt, which is why any homeowner should be concerned.

Millions are impacted. Most don't know it, and if you're in a block of 4 storeys+ then you probably are too.

Stop the spin. Legislate. Remediate. Compensate.