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By Sebastian O’Kelly
LKP director
The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is holding a parliamentary meeting at Westminster on January 9 at 5pm to address the cladding crisis.
It is clear to LKP – and should be to officials and ministers – that thousands of flat owners living in sites with combustible cladding face losing their homes in operations to remove the material.
Many of these flats have now received zero valuations and are unsellable.
These anxieties beset the cladding leaseholders, on top of living in a home now deemed unsafe.
Where responsibility is not resolved in the courts, or where no developer steps forward to do the work, the solution is inevitably going to involve public money, either in loan form or grant.
The alternative is that freehold owners take the leaseholders to court to enforce payment, and many hundreds, or even thousands, will lose their homes because of cladding material on the building (which they do not own and did not build).
It must now be clear even to government that the third-party freeholder, who bought the building’s income streams, has no part to play in resolving this crisis in spite of the lobbying that they are somehow the responsible “long-term custodians”.
As these buildings have zero value, the freehold is worthless as well and needs transferring to the leaseholders who, as the party with the overwhelming financial stake in the blocks, can then take steps to resolve the crisis without an irrelevant – and often offshore – third-party freeholder.
The speakers are:
Dr Jonathan Evans, of construction consultants Ash and Lacy and Professor Susan Bright, Oxford University.
But we very much want to hear the voices of representatives of those inadvertently caught up in this disaster as well.
This meeting will be a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on leasehold reform, once the group is re-established in the new Parliament.
If you live in a cladding site, make sure your MP attends.
Please respond here if you would like to attend:
January 9 2020 Westminster cladding meeting
Related posts:
Residents at cladding site Citiscape allowed back in to retrieve possessions
Grenfell cladding leaseholders form campaign group
Cladding leaseholders must unite … and get MPs to attend Hilary Benn’s debate on February 12
Only one Grenfell cladding site in line for taxpayer handout as December 31st deadline looms, reports BBC R4 You and Yours
Barratt evacuates Grenfell cladding site Citiscape
LKP trustee Professor James Driscoll dies
We have a problem due to a mortgage being unobtainable for a 2005 built high rise flat in Edinburgh. It conformed with all regulations at that time and was even given an all clear earlier this year. But in August this year everything appeared to change, with Surveyors being told by mortgage companies to value these properties at £nil.
I made an enquiry to the Scottish Parliament, the Edinburgh Fire Brigade and a major Fire Prevention Company in Edinburgh.
They all said they were awaiting instructions from the UK Government.
I wrote to the UK Government who took about three weeks to reply saying it is up to the Building Owner to get professional advice on how to solve the problem.
I wrote to the UK Gov again saying that all other authorities consider it is up to the UK Government to make a decision.
After two weeks (today) I received another reply saying because there is now a General Election they do not know what the policy of the next Government will be.
This has caused a major problem in that a long chain of sales is falling through because the buyer of the flat cannot obtain a mortgage.
This situation must be reoccurring numerous times throughout the UK.