BBC’s Newsnight devoted an entire program to the building safety crisis but could find no government or developer representative prepared to go on air.
As Parliament returns next week to continue its examination of the Building Safety Bill, this program was a timely reminder of how many people are financially and physically trapped by fire safety defects in their homes.
biggest public policy
Introducing the program, Newsnight presenter, Emilly Maitlis said, “For many the wake-up call was the fire at Grenfell Tower, but this story doesn’t begin nor does it end with Grenfell.”
Lewis Goodall is Newsnight’s Policy Editor. He said, “This is a crisis, a scandal which has been 30 years in the making.” Lewis crowd-sourced video evidence from those affected, he asked people to send in video snippets to share how the building safety crisis affects them. He added, “This is perhaps the biggest public policy and commercial failure that we have in Britain today.”
7-minute film
It is a public policy failure of extraordinary scope, reach, and depth, but where did it come from?"
A 7-minute film demonstrated the depth and breadth of the problem. It included testimony from leaseholders who shared the extent of the financial burdens they face, with bills of £70,000 and £100,000 for some; bankruptcy is a reality for many.
Lewis asked, “It is a public policy failure of extraordinary scope, reach, and depth, but where did it come from?” Charlotte in Bow, East London told Lewis, “We’ve got flammable cladding on parts of the building, we’ve also got combustible insulation and we have missing cavity barriers.”
impact on her mental health
She talked with great emotion about the stress and impact on her mental health over the last year of the prospect of losing her home. “Their lives are in aspic,” he concluded.
The building safety crisis started with Grenfell but it isn’t just about cladding, Lewis explored how the EWS1 form revealed the huge extent of fire safety failings in buildings across the UK.
systemic failure
He asked, “How could it be that so many modern buildings could have been constructed so poorly?” He said it is a systemic failure of the construction industry and successive governments, as both have been deregulated over many years.
In some ways, he argued, the problem is too vast. Pete Apps, the Deputy Editor of Inside Housing explained that the Government is concerned about “a huge blank cheque” and that so far the government hasn’t done anything to “upset the developers”.
Need for solution
This is a problem made in Whitehall, it needs to be fixed in Whitehall, we need a solution that works for everybody
Emily Maitlis interviewed Liam Spender from the UK Cladding Action Group. He said, “This is a problem made in Whitehall, it needs to be fixed in Whitehall. We need a solution that works for everybody.” The lion’s share of the costs, he argued should come from industry.
Sir Peter Bottomley MP, the ‘Father of the House’ appeared along with Graham Watts from the Construction Industry Council.
£5 billion for building safety crisis
The Government has pledged £5 billion to deal with the building safety crisis but it is limited in scope. Sir Peter, like the Housing Select Committee, agreed that the sum required to fix the problem is more like £15 billion.
Sir Peter said, “The Government has to make sure that we find all the problems, we fix all the problems and fund them all.” He concluded that all three have not happened.
deregulation
Asked by Emily Maitlis whether the buck stops with the construction industry, Graham Watts responded, “The building safety crisis is the product of a completely broken system and it has many causes; the construction industry is a part of that.” He added, “We’ve had 40 years of deregulation that allowed buildings to be built with unsafe external wall systems with everyone involved believing that would be OK.”
Mr. Watts talked about needing to address competence as part of reforming the construction industry. “This tends to be talked of as a problem about fire safety in tall buildings, but it’s about life safety in all buildings.”
fire safety defects
We’ve got to assess, fix, fund, and then certify every building in the country"
No one from the Government nor the Conservative backbenches was prepared to go on the program, but Shadow Housing Secretary, Lucy Powell MP did speak to Emily Maitlis. Asked about Labour’s strategy for dealing with the crisis, she said, “There’s no real assessment of risk here. We’ve got to assess, fix, fund, and then certify every building in the country. We need to protect leaseholders from footing any bill for remediation.”
The Economics Editor, Ben Chu explored whether the crisis has the potential to damage the housing market. He said that up to 1 million properties could have issues with fire safety defects. “This is not a marginal issue in the context of the wider housing market.”
building safety problem
In the final segment of the program, Mick Platt, CEO of Wallace Partnership Group was joined by Martin Boyd from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.
Mick said that the building safety problem was caused by, “A massive regulatory failure. I think the Government has not understood the scale of the problem.” He said that freeholders were willing to deal with remediation, but were looking to the Government for funding and that it is not coming quickly enough.
Freeholders
Martin Boyd responded, “Freeholders have the control but they are not liable for the costs.” He said that the freeholder could sue the developer, “But they have no vested interest in doing so.” He agreed with Mick Platt, CEO of Wallace Partnership Group, a freehold organization that the people who are responsible for the problem are the developers. In this case, not one developer appeared on the program.
The program was widely supported by leasehold campaigners, who took to Twitter to commend Newsnight for dedicating the entire program to the building safety crisis.