Deleted User 298457
Deleted User 298457
Edit: Thought you said buyers.
It's also worth noting these residents right now can't get home insurance for a reasonable price, a remortgage or move out.
Unsafe building cladding - who should pay?
- Thread starter silvagti
- Start date
It's also worth noting these residents right now can't get home insurance for a reasonable price, a remortgage or move out.
Exactly. So they should either tell them to get lost, or take it out of the rent money they are paying. What are they gonna do, if they kick them out no one will move in and they get nothing.
not the first time it happened either
remember the prefab flats like ronan point that didn't even get built properly. they were supposed to have steel joints in the corners holding the walls together.
but oops the manufacturing tolerance was crap, the joints didnt always fit so the workmen just ignored it and kept building anyway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point#Griffiths_inquiry
oops
Aye iirc there were several similar instances at the time, another one was the post WW2 prefabs that were tried near Milton Keynes (from memory) that were basically rows of bungalows made out of a cardboard based material and had to be put out of use in a fairly major hurry after what should have been a minor fire went through a block in a matter of minutes.
It's why some of the people are ending up letting their houses be repossessed, they can't afford to pay the mortgage and the other fees so unfortunately for some the only option is to write off probably the most expensive thing they've ever bought, and potentially go bankrupt in the process.
the problem is a lot of these buildings have people who bought their flat with a leasehold, if they leave they're without a home and still on the hook for the mortgage, but because they're leasehold they can't refuse to pay things like the "maintenance" fees or shared costs for the fire patrols.
It's why some of the people are ending up letting their houses be repossessed, they can't afford to pay the mortgage and the other fees so unfortunately for some the only option is to write off probably the most expensive thing they've ever bought, and potentially go bankrupt in the process.
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Yeah - there are building inspectors in local government - hence a failure of regulation. You can argue for fire safety that the products should be independently tested with spot checks on stock to stop them changing the specs after certification. If they've sold it as fire resistant to a certain standard when it goes up like a 1970s soft then surely they're liable (and insured) to rectify the mistake. Building inspector should pick up anything not installed as per the instructions.
In all likelihood it's a symptom of austerity cuts from 10+ years ago.
I do feel for the leaseholder. I'm lucky, no cladding on this building.
Would the bank even repossess in these circumstances? If the asset is essentially worth £0 (no one is going to buy it), and by repossessing surely they would become liable for the costs?
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The building companies should take the hit. If that means they go bankrupt then so be it. A company that causes this shouldn't be allowed to exist.
Soldato
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Any tenants will have been long gone. The leaseholders are the ones with the problem as they can't sell for anything like what the apartments were worth before this and they can't afford the charges being levied by the management companies.
When I lived in a leasehold apartment every leaseholder had to pay into a fund that was intended to cover large costs like re-roofing. When we sold, we got none of that back of course. I would guess none of these buildings are old enough that the funds would cover these huge re-cladding costs.
IIRC the bank reposes but then tries to get the balance of what is owed out of you.
Hence it causes you to go bankrupt as you've now got an outstanding debt but no way to pay it/no assets.
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Yes it changed the Regs, progressive collapse was in introduced by engineers, it shouldn't happen again. Hopefully the same happens now these same towers are being clad in aluminium rainscreen.
Would the government not have subcontracted out the contract / maintenance management? If so, that doesn't fall on the government, although they may have been the building owner.
There are significant differences, though. In this case, buildings were deliberately made unsafe to increase profits and that fact was concealed from buyers. Test results were falsified, so even if buyers had paid to acquire the test results directly (if they were allowed to do so) they would still have been misled. Regulation was inadequate and implemented by people unqualified to do so.
I bought a property with some problems. I paid extra for a more detailed survey, which resulted in a small book's worth of detailed explanations of what tests were done, what wasn't tested and why (e.g. they didn't smash out the plaster on the walls to check everything under it), what the results of the tests were, analyses of the likely effects of those results, what the problems were, suggestions on what could be done to resolve them, etc, etc. So I knew what the problems were and factored them into the price. I made an informed decision. In the case of dangerous cladding, buyers were deliberately misinformed and that's pretty much the opposite.
I'm not sure but is the bank allowed to make you homeless in bankruptcy proceedings?
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And that is what happened to this poor lady in this video clip here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-55847260
I feel so incredibly sorry for the folks caught up in something that has absolutely nothing to do with them. It must be terrifying going through living in a place that is such a fire risk, and then having to try and stump up vast sums to cover fire wardens etc. and then also be unable to sell. A true nightmare scenario.
What'cha talking about Willis?
At no point have I mentioned the government being a building owner.
Who gets a new build surveyed? It's under a new home warranty usually for 10 years. You'd expect that the certifications for building and fire safety weren't issued on the basis of lies that weren't checked properly.
Does seem like a failure of regulation to me, both that dangerous construction was allowed, and that its not automatically possible to recoup costs from companies that produce and install dangerous products like this, especially when they have actually lied in test reports and marketing etc.
Short answer the companies that did it should be on the hook, and if that really results in them going bankrupt then so be it.
If that doesn't happen I don't necessarily think the taxpayer should be the one to step in to cover costs though - after all if there was a problem with my house not covered by insurance that I'd have no recourse to government money.
Short answer the companies that did it should be on the hook, and if that really results in them going bankrupt then so be it.
If that doesn't happen I don't necessarily think the taxpayer should be the one to step in to cover costs though - after all if there was a problem with my house not covered by insurance that I'd have no recourse to government money.
Normal surveys wouldn't cover stuff like checking the rating of insulation used behind cladding or forming an independent opinion on whether building codes are correct or certification is valid, and I don't think they would be expected to. Basically anything that would need a screwdriver to see or reviewing construction designs is out of scope for normal surveys, so you'd have to be hiring a specialist and getting permission for them to take the fabric of the building apart if you wanted them to uncover stuff like that. Might be something you did if you're buying a multi million pound 18th century mansion but completely unreasonable for normal houses imo, and I doubt any chartered surveyor would recommend it unless they were trying to take you for a ride.
People who aren't buying when it's new.
I would expect a surveyor to check whether something was up to code, just as they would find out if a property had an illegal extension.
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The company that made it, the bodies that approved it for installation, the organisation that decided to install it, the company that installed it and whomever signed it off as safe.
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It's more of an enforcement problem that a regulation problem.
The developers shouldn't be trusted. The government should pay and then hit larger building firms with a one of levy to cover the bill. If some of them go under, good riddance.
The firms are rotten.