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A thread about the #claddingscandal. I bought my flat through the #sharedownership scheme in 2012. I own 25% and rent 75%, the only way I could ever have afforded a flat which was valued at £215,000 when I bought it. It is currently worth £0 due to a lack of fire safety regs.
Our fire report states things like "the timber cladding & PIR Insulation represents the potential for rapid external fire spread" and "a fire affecting this corridor, on all floor levels, would render the means of escape unavailable, and would also impede firefighting access"
We've got no timescales for the work needed (all cladding and timber balconies replaced and more testing to the insulation in the brickwork) and no detail of costs yet. We currently pay £8,000 a week for waking watch (two of whom were sacked for being caught asleep).
Oh, there's also no fire alarm system or sprinklers. Great. Shared ownership residents get no communication from the management company and have had one letter from our housing association. Everything we know comes from private owners who pass on information to us.
When I owned a car and 15 years after it was made it was found to have a faulty airbag, it was replaced for free by Toyota. This was despite the fact that I was responsible for all maintenance of the car. The manufactor took responsibility for a safety issue and rectified it.
But builders are not taking responsibility for cladding. Home owners are being told by the government that they can take out a loan (a loan not an extension on their mortgage because a bank won't loan against the property). This could be for around £70,000.
Please, please do all you can to highlight the cladding scandal. Write to your MP, tweet @RobertJenrick and ask him to #endthecladdingscandal. He says he wants to build more houses but 1.5m people live in unsafe and unsellable properties and this needs to be sorted.
