G15 responds to Select Committee inquiry into building safety
The G15 has responded to the Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities Select Committee inquiry into building safety: remediation and funding.
Our Chair, Geeta Nanda OBE (Chief Executive of MTVH), also gave oral evidence to the committee on 2nd February. You can watch the session back here.
G15 members’ number one priority is our residents’ safety. In response to the tragic Grenfell Tower fire and the resulting building safety crisis, our members have taken swift action to assess potentially high-risk buildings, to pursue those responsible for any defects found, and to begin works where they are required.
Not-for-profit G15 members have already invested approximately £455m in essential building safety works and associated activity since 2019. Collectively, the G15 are forecasting to spend £3.6bn on building safety works and activity between 2021 and 2036.
The announcements from the Secretary of State on 10 January 2022 were a welcome step in the right direction. The Secretary of State’s key principles of protecting leaseholders for significant costs, requiring those responsible for causing the crisis to pay for fixing it, and restoring proportionality to the system are all vital.
However, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged, the announcements are not a complete solution for the building safety crisis. Issues beyond cladding continue to be found with certain buildings, and where they pose a significant risk to safety, they must be addressed. It is estimated that over half of remediation costs facing G15 members are from non-cladding works, which there is currently no government funding to address.
The significant costs of addressing this crisis that housing associations are having to shoulder have already had an impact on our ability to build much needed new affordable homes.
To ensure we can continue to build the homes that are so desperately needed across the country, as well as investing in existing homes and services for our residents, a truly comprehensive solution to this crisis is required. This must ensure that those responsible for causing it meet the costs of resolving it.
Read the full response by clicking on the button below.