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The government has set out new targets to fix unsafe buildings in England as part of a new Remediation Acceleration Plan.
The plan introduces new measures to get buildings fixed quicker, ensure rogue freeholders are held to account, and put the end in sight for affected residents.
For the first time it sets clear target dates for making buildings safe and proposes to introduce significantly tougher penalties for refusing to act. According to the plan, by the end of 2029:
The plan is also 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.
Alongside the plan, the government published 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 work on all their buildings will start by summer 2027.
Seven years after 72 lives were lost following the Grenfell Tower fire, thousands of residents still live in buildings wrapped in unsafe cladding. 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. This means that work has been completed on only 1,436 of the 4,834 11m+ buildings identified in England with unsafe cladding.
Current estimates suggest that there are between 4,000 and 7,000 buildings in England with unsafe cladding still to be identified.
Since July, the government has engaged with Mayors, local enforcement agencies and developers to address the unacceptably slow pace of remediation and will now set out its plan to speed it up.
The plan follows the publication of the full Grenfell Tower Inquiry report in September, which highlighted catastrophic and systemic failures in keeping people safe. It delivers on the Prime Minister’s commitment that the government set out further steps on remediation by the autumn to deliver real change. The government is considering the Phase 2 report of the Inquiry and has committed to providing an update on our progress by March 2025.
The Remediation Acceleration Plan will speed up the process of making homes safe by focusing on three key objectives:??
However the UK’s largest distributor of quality-assured cladding products has criticised the government’s targets as unrealistic, given the chronic shortages of skilled labour and materials. Peter Johnson, founder and Chairman of Vivalda Group plc, welcomes the aims of the Accelerated Remediation Plan but is worried that a lack of skilled cladding installers and building safety inspectors will significantly hamper progress.
While he welcomed the government’s promise to publish a pipeline of remediation projects to promote confidence within the industry, Johnson was less convinced by the paper’s approach to addressing the skills gap.
He said: “The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) estimates that the UK will need an extra 225,000 workers from 2023–2027, and a significant proportion of these must be involved in cladding. The government’s only strategy to address this huge gap involves granting overseas workers with the right qualifications Visas to work in England. While this might fill a few hundred vacancies at best, I was hoping to see a more meaningful initiative to encourage unemployed workers already in the UK to take up a career in construction.”
Johnson also voiced concerns over the number of approved building inspectors available to carry out this important work. He said: “Earlier this year, Lorna Stimpson, chief executive of Local Authority Building Control, wrote to the government to warn that a “significant number” of local authorities will be unable to undertake building control services from April unless a deadline to register and achieve certification was extended. We’ve not heard much about this since, then, but I fear that this structural issue has not been solved in just a few months.”
To fill the gap in on-site skills, Johnson added that off-site fabrication could play a major role in creating a more efficient remediation supply chain. He said: “It makes sense that we should be making cladding remediation as simple as possible, while not compromising quality or safety. We operate from 11 UK locations, providing precise CNC cutting, drilling and fixing of brackets to boards which can then be installed on a building straight off the lorry. We think wider uptake of this proven, more innovative approach to remediation will play a big part in speeding up the process.”
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said: "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. We are taking decisive action to right this wrong and make homes safe.
"Our Remediation Acceleration Plan will ensure those responsible for making buildings safe deliver the change residents need and deserve."
Building Safety Minister Alex Norris said:?"Every resident deserves to feel safe in their home. By setting a clear timeline and firm deadlines, today’s announcement is a major step towards ensuring every building is made safe.
"Our Remediation Acceleration plan will fix buildings faster, identify all buildings with unsafe cladding and support vulnerable residents.
"This underscores our unwavering commitment to safeguarding residents and holding those responsible to account. We will not hesitate to actively pursue the owners of buildings who refuse to act."
