A final thought on Jenrick's announcement today. The route of the government's problem is a failure to distinguish the varying levels of risk in buildings and until that nettle is grasped this problem will never go away. https://twitter.com/PeteApps/status/1359484585487327232

We've got to remember why all this is necessary. It's to stop a repeat of the absolutely appalling tragedy which took place less than four years ago. Fire deaths in high rises might be low, but that doesn't change the fact that the conditions for a repeat disaster still exist.

Any part of achieving this aim should be proactively assessing blocks of flats with a view to working out which are potential Grenfells, which are potential Lakanals and which are not perfect but are not that bad.

But this has just never been something the government has attempted seriously. Instead, it has published advice suggesting all combustible materials must be removed from all buildings and basically sat back and let the market react to that.

Ultimately, in failing to properly engage with the post-Grenfell problem (where are the next death traps) it has created an even bigger problem which it now has no idea how to solve and cannot afford to pay for.

But imagine if we had four categories:

A - remediate immediately
B - interim measures (sprinklers/fire alarms) immediately, remediation ASAP
C - interim measures will be enough
D - No action needed

It's quite possible that £5bn might actually be enough to solve that problem without resulting in billing leaseholders. It might also not be nearly enough, but no one knows because we haven't done that work.

The assessment is falling on the shoulders of private surveyors and lenders through the EWS1 system, who are obliged by their nature (and PI cover) to be extremely risk averse and stick to the letter of government advice notes.

But this means we can't see the wood for the trees. There is an enormous queue for remediation and the next disaster might be waiting its turn, until the day someone drops a cigarette on a balcony and it's all too late.

So the infuriating thing is that we might be bankrupting a poor leaseholder in Leeds somewhere to remediate a building which is largely safe anyway, and doing nothing to fix the horrendously dangerous block down the road because the council couldn't get a surveyor in time

We will start to see the end of the crisis when the government grasps that and acts. Until then, we're stuck on an endless cycle of leaseholder campaigns and incrementally larger funding announcements (ends)