Housing associations have told The i Paper they have no choice but to tear down buildings or evict tenants and sell their homes on the open market as no government funding is available to help meet the cost of renovations.
Bouverie Court in Easton, Bristol, is set to be torn down in 2026 after housing association Elim Housing was hit with a £4m bill to replace its external cladding and fix other fire defects.
Bouverie Court was built in 2011 and contains 14 self-contained flats and seven houses which are home to more than 50 residents.
“We felt that there was not much prospect of getting anything from them or our insurance so we gave up,” Smith said.
Ruth Davison, Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association chief executive, outside Kinver House in north London (Photo: Tom Pilston)
“It’s inexplicable that there is no government help for social housing providers,” he added.
“Nobody goes into the business of providing social housing to take people’s homes off them.”
Kinver House in Archway, north London, is a medium-rise building with serious fire safety issues including flammable timber cladding and missing fire breaks.
Funding to fix Grenfell-style fire safety issues
There are three main Government funding pots available for the remediation of social housing blocks but there are restrictions on which buildings apply.
The Building Safety Fund (BSF)
This fund is available for buildings over 18 metres tall. It was opened to applications in 2020 and then again in 2022.
It not only covers the cost of removing unsafe cladding but also insulation.
Social landlords can apply to the BSF but only if they have at least one qualifying private leaseholder homeowner living in the block.
The Cladding Safety Scheme
This scheme provides funding for the management of unsafe cladding on medium-rise buildings between 11 and 18 metres in height. It is only available for the removal of cladding and does not cover other fire safety defects.
The Social Sector ACM removal fund
In 2018, the government announced a £400m Social Sector ACM Cladding Remediation Fund to pay for the removal and replacement of unsafe ACM cladding on social residential buildings of 18 metres or over. However, it is only available for ACM cladding – the same as that of Grenfell Tower.
Ruth Davison, the chief executive of ISHA, said she has no choice but to sell off valuable social homes, including in Sir Keir Starmer’s constituency in nearby Holborn and St Pancras, in order to fund a fire safety bill at Kinver House which has run into the millions.
“We’re not only having to sell off affordable homes, we’ve massively scaled back on building new homes.
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The trade body for housing associations, the National Housing Federation (NHF), is calling on the Government to give social housing providers equal access to the Building Safety Fund and Cladding Safety Scheme at the Chancellor’s upcoming Spending Review.
Research by the NHF and Savills suggests that without government support for social housing providers, including building safety funding, the Labour Government is likely to fall around 500,000 homes short of its target to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current Parliament.
“Alongside this we are taking action to accelerate remediation of social housing, including increasing support for social landlords to access funding.”
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