Written evidence submitted by Kathryn Kennedy [BSB 371]
The building safety bill as drafted makes a bad situation worse for leaseholders.
Through no fault of their own, they find themselves living in flats constructed with defective fire safety measures, not only combustible cladding, but also missing fire breaks and cavity barriers, contravening regulations which were in effect at the time of construction.
Whether as a result of non-compliant construction originally, or application of retrospective regulation on combustible materials, these homes have now been condemned as death traps and require remediation.
I am a shared ownership leaseholder in a below 18m 5 storey building owned by social housing provider Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) in NW London. An external intrusive survey has revealed combustible timber cladding and missing cavity barriers, which indicates non compliance by the developer when the building was constructed in 2009.
Currently NHG, and freeholders across the country, are taking advantage of leasehold service charges in order to disguise the astronomical costs of remedial works (and interim measures such as waking watch and temporary fire alarms) as ‘repairs and maintenance’ and pass these crippling costs to leaseholders, the only people who have absolutely no fault in causing this dire situation. Fixing defects in a building, and the safety costs associated with them, can under no circumstances be described as a ‘repair’ or ‘maintenance’.
Typical costs for our building amount to £400 per month per 1 bedroom flat, £1500 for temporary alarms system per flat, and between £50,000 and £100,000 for eventual removal of facade, installation of cavity barriers and facade replacement. Of course this is in addition the the already high cost of mortgage and rent in our shared ownership scheme (a misnomer, as nothing is owned, and as we can see, costs are not shared)
The building safety charge as outlined in the draft safety bill seeks to enshrine this right to charge leaseholders for retrospective remedy of safety defects in law, something which is simply not morally acceptable.
This would contradict any other aspect of consumer protection law in this country. If a car is bought with brakes missing, the buyer is not expected to pay more to have them added. Purchases of a toaster in John Lewis seem to have more consumer protection than a leaseholder in a flammable flat.
Lease terms were agreed to on the basis that the property being leased had been subject to proper regulatory approval. As this has been found not to be the case, there terms of the lease under which the freeholder seeks to recover costs of making building safe are surely invalid. I understood I was buying a safe, compliant home. It now transpires I was mis-sold no such thing.
Freeholders who have the ability to pass on costs to leaseholders have no incentive to find cost effective solutions, and in my experience, in fact seek to profit from leaseholders misfortune in this matter. Our “affordable housing” social landlord NHG charges 15% management fees on top of contractor costs for waking watch provision for example.
As NHG are not spending from their own money, they have no urgency, causing delays to works and prolonging expensive costs of waking watch personnel (entirely ineffective as a safety measure and purely a tick box exercise to be seen to comply with blanket guidance)
When given the option of charging leaseholders, our housing association also has no incentive to chase the developer who failed to comply with regulations, to make a claim against them. They likely do not want to harm relations with their business partner, so prefer to hold their leaseholders to ransom as they have no option but to pay up or lose their home and entire investment of life savings, mortgage, and end up homeless and bankrupt.
Everything about this draft building safety bill is wrong.