The government has set out tough new targets to fix unsafe buildings in England as part of its new Remediation Acceleration Plan.
The plan will introduce new measures to get buildings fixed quicker and ensure rogue freeholders are held to account by proposing significantly tougher penalties for those refusing to act.
It promises that by the end of 2029, all 18m+ (high-rise) buildings with unsafe cladding in a government-funded scheme will have been remediated and that by the end of 2029, every 11m+ building with unsafe cladding will either have been remediated, have a date for completion, or the landlords will be liable for severe penalties.
The plan will also be backed by investment in enforcement so that local authorities, fire and rescue authorities and the Building Safety Regulator have the capacity to tackle hundreds of cases per year.
The government will also publish a joint action plan with developers to accelerate their work to fix buildings for which they are responsible. At least 29 developers, covering over 95% of the buildings which developers are remediating themselves, have committed to more than doubling the rate at which they have been assessing and starting to fix unsafe buildings, meaning that work on all their buildings will start by summer 2027.
To date, 95% of buildings with the same type of cladding used on Grenfell have been remediated. However, only 30% of identified buildings in England have been remediated, with potentially thousands more buildings yet to be identified.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner says that more than seven years on from the Grenfell tragedy, thousands of people have been left living in homes across this country with dangerous cladding.
“The pace of remediation has been far too slow for far too long,” she adds. “We are taking decisive action to right this wrong and make homes safe.”
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