Grenfell Tower: Regulations introduced after the fire to force building owners to fix serious safety issues are still being ignored
Legal powers introduced since the Grenfell Tower fire to force building owners to fix serious fire safety issues are being ignored, Sky News can reveal.
One of the UK’s first Building Remediation Orders, issued by a judge last year, gave the owners of a block of flats in Bristol six months to fix serious fire safety defects including removing dangerous Grenfell-style insulation. The court’s deadline has now passed and nothing has been done, leaving residents fearful in their homes.
As a major report is published tomorrow to name and shame those responsible for the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people on 14 June 2017, there are still hundreds of thousands of people living in buildings they know to be unsafe.
Seven years on from the disaster, legislation enacted to end Britain’s building safety crisis has failed to be enforced.
At least 3,280 buildings are known to still have unsafe cladding, with only 949 of those having started works, according to the latest government data.
‘Scary to think about’
Steph Culpin
“It’s something you think about every day,” says Steph Culpin, 37, who owns a flat on the second floor of the colourful block needing repair in Bristol.
“There are people in the building that might struggle to get out if there’s a fire…the best we’ve got is that a fire hasn’t happened. And that’s scary to think about.”
Ms Culpin bought her two-bedroom flat in Orchard House, a former office building that was extended and converted into 54 flats in 2018, a year after the Grenfell Tower fire.
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Tower block that went up in flames was having cladding replaced
Orchard House
It wasn’t until 2019 that she and other residents were informed through new fire surveys required post-Grenfell that there was a litany of alarming safety risks.
Flammable material around Ms Culpin’s windows and installed between the two buildings of her block was labelled “high risk”.
And the shock discovery of combustible insulation manufactured by Celotex, one of the firms who gave evidence at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, meant Orchard House was given the lowest fire safety rating available on a five-point scale.
The Building Safety Act, which was drawn up in the wake of the Grenfell fire and took effect in 2023, placed responsibility on building owners to replace defective materials.
But the owner of Orchard House, Stockwood Land 2 Limited, currently run by Amarjit Singh Litt and previously by members of the Litt family, has refused to engage with any of the problems found.
In November 2023, Ms Culpin and a fellow resident became one of only a handful to take their freeholder to court to try to force action.
Orchard House’s owner didn’t attend the court hearing despite the judge ruling they “knew or ought to have known about these proceedings”.
The tribunal ruled in favour of the residents and ordered the owner to carry out the work by June 2024.
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‘I realised the burning building was my own home’
However, the deadline came and went, the work has not been done and no one from Stockwood Land 2 Limited has responded to the many attempts to contact them.
“When you talk to somebody that isn’t in this situation, it’s actually really difficult to get across the severity of it and how it makes you feel,” Ms Culpin says. “From a mental health point of view, from a financial point of view.
“Because they just go, ‘surely somebody is going to make sure they do that. Are you sure you’ve spoken to the right people?’ and those are [the] sort of questions that you get and you go, ‘yeah, I’ve knocked on every door we have. And they’re all just shut’.”
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Ms Culpin can’t sell the flat because until the work has been done no mortgage lender will approve an application from a buyer.
She is now paying interest on a Help To Buy Loan she cannot pay off.
All government schemes to help fund remedial works have to be agreed upon by the building owners and cannot be instigated by residents.
‘You live with it all the time’
Across the country, there are thousands of examples of buildings where work should have been done but hasn’t because the owners have delayed it or disappeared.
Paul Baston
In Birmingham, Paul Baston, 66, lives on the top floor of Liberty Place, a high-rise canal-side development.
Standing on his balcony, the problem is clear. Banned aluminium composite (ACM) cladding covers the outside walls from floor to ceiling.
ACM is the same cladding that was on Grenfell Tower and was immediately forbidden from being used on buildings after the tragedy.
“It is very, very stressful. It’s very worrying. You live with it all the time,” says Mr Baston, who keeps his passport, driving licence, keys and wallet on his bedside table in case he has to evacuate the building in a hurry.
He worries about others in the building with young families or elderly relatives.
“You’ve got to be mindful and be prepared. And this is as prepared as I can be,” he says.
Mr Baston’s building is owned by Lendlease, who told Sky News it plans to carry out replacement work later this year.
Jim Illingworth
‘Half-safe’
In another part of Birmingham, Jim Illingworth, 65, has new cladding which was replaced by his building’s owners under the government’s Building Safety Scheme.
But not all fire risks have been removed.
Internal surveys routinely carried out by mortgage lenders and insurance companies have revealed a design flaw that means fire could still spread rapidly between flats.
Mr Illingworth, who lives in the one-bedroom flat with his wife, says it leaves the building “half-safe”.
Now categorised as just one rating above Ms Culpin in Bristol, his risk is deemed low enough that remedial works are not required.
“According to the government, it’s nice and safe – according to the insurers and the mortgage people, it’s not safe.
“So we’ve got the government saying one thing and the practicality on the ground saying something totally different.”
It means Mr Illingworth is paying three times as much in building insurance compared to when he moved in.
He says there are estate agents who “won’t touch the buildings” due to banks still being reluctant to offer mortgages on the flats.
Recommendations in the final report from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry will focus on the technical aspects of the fire at the west London building “to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again”.
But people across the UK are raising the same warnings and living with the same combustible materials which made up Grenfell Tower, as well as uncovering new fire risks every day.
There is “considerably more doubt” over when future interest rate cuts can take place, the governor of the Bank of England has said.
Andrew Bailey told a committee of MPs that the risks around inflation had gone up and he was “more concerned” about weakness in the labour market.
Bank staff projections expect the main consumer prices index measure of inflation to rise to 4% this year – double the 2% target rate – from its current level of 3.8%. Food prices are proving the main driver currently, with part of the increases blamed on government tax rises on employers.
On the prospects for further interest rate reductions this year, Mr Bailey said: “There is now considerably more doubt about when and exactly how quickly we can make those further steps.”
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Interest rates are elevated to help ease the pace of price growth and cut, when able, to help maintain inflation at the 2% target level.
The governor was speaking after the Bank’s split vote last month that resulted in a quarter point reduction for Bank rate to 4%.
At that time, the governor said that while he still believed that the future path for borrowing costs was still downwards gradually over time, financial markets had since understood that the outlook for the pace of cuts was more murky.
“That’s the message I wanted to get across”, he told the Treasury select committee.
“Now, I think actually, judging by what’s happened, certainly to market pricing since then, I think that message has been understood.”
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Inflation up: the bad and ‘good’ news
A further quarter point cut to 3.75% is no longer fully priced in for this year, according to LSEG data on market expectations.
He was speaking as financial markets continued to see a widespread sell-off of long-dated bonds, largely over fears of rising government debt levels in many western economies including the US and UK.
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Why did UK debt just get more expensive?
The activity has taken the yield – the effective interest rate demanded by investors – in 30-year gilts to a 27-year high this week. Other shorter dated bonds have also risen sharply.
But Mr Bailey urged less of an emphasis on the long-term gilts, as headlines point out that any increase in the cost of servicing government debt is a headache chancellor Rachel Reeves can well do without as she battles to balance the books.
He told the MPs: “It’s important not to … over focus on the 30-year bond rate. Of course, it’s a number that gets quoted a lot, it’s quite a high number. It is actually not a number that is being used for funding at all at the moment.”
Mr Bailey also waded into the continuing row across the Atlantic that sees the independence of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, threatened by Donald Trump and his quest for interest rate cuts.
He has moved to fire a Fed governor over alleged mortgage fraud and make a new appointment but Lisa Cook, who was appointed to the board by Joe Biden, is fighting his bid to oust her in the courts.
“This is a very serious situation”, Mr Bailey said.
“I am very concerned. The Federal Reserve… has built up a very strong reputation for independence and for its decision making,”, adding that trading central bank independence against other government decisions would be a “very dangerous road to go down”.
After hitting the highest level this century on Tuesday, the cost of long term UK government borrowing has now hit a fresh 27-year high.
The interest rate demanded by investors on the state’s long-dated borrowing (30-year bonds) rose to just below 5.75%, surpassing the 5.72% peak reached on Tuesday, pushing it to a high not seen since May 1998.
It comes as the government auctioned off these long-term loans on Tuesday and was forced to pay a premium to do so.
Issuing bonds is a routine way states raise money.
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As well as meaning the state has to pay more to borrow money, high interest rates on debt can signify reduced investor confidence in the ability of the UK to pay back these loans.
As the trading session continued, the interest rates on long-term government bonds, known as gilt yields, fell back to just above 5.66%, not enough to erase two days of rises.
The benchmark for state borrowing costs, the interest rate on 10-year bonds, also saw rises. The yield rose above 4.8% for the first time since January, before slightly falling back
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Why did UK debt just get more expensive?
The spiked borrowing cost also continued to cause a weakening in the pound.
After an initial fall to a month-long low against the dollar, one pound again buys $1.34.
It means sterling goes less far in dollars than before the latest peak in interest rates on government bonds. On Monday, sterling could buy $1.35.
Sterling dropped to equal €1.14 before easing up to €1.15. Just a few months earlier, a pound could buy €1.19 before Donald Trump’s April country-specific tariff announcements.
So why has this happened?
Government borrowing costs have been rising across the world amid a sell-off in bonds – which prompts investors to look for a higher return to hold them.
High inflation and national debts have increased concern about whether states can pay back the money.
Japan’s long-term borrowing cost hit a record high, while the yield on the US’s benchmark 10-year bond hit the 5% mark for the first time since July.
UK bond yields tend to follow the US.
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Key to easing UK borrowing costs was the announcement of the date of the budget on Wednesday morning.
UK public finances had been a worry for markets as Chancellor Rachel Reeves struggles to stick to her fiscal rules to bring down the debt and balance the budget.
Disquiet around comparatively low growth in the UK economy also played a role.
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