The removal of dangerous cladding from thousands of buildings across the capital can only be accelerated with more funding from the Government, the London Assembly has warned.
Mayor Sadiq Khan has been urged this week by the Assembly’s fire committee to lobby ministers for the money needed to enforce tougher regulations when it comes to remediating buildings.
The committee’s Liberal Democrat chair, Hina Bokhari, said the recommendations set out in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s recent Phase 2 report are “critically important to Londoners” - pointing out that the capital contains more than half of England’s high and medium-rise buildings so far identified to have unsafe cladding.
According to the latest Government data, a total of 4,821 such buildings are awaiting remediation or have been remediated, of which 2,676 (56 per cent) are in London.
Of London’s total, only 727 (27 per cent) have been completely remediated - a slightly lower proportion than the England-wide total of 1,412 remediated buildings (29 per cent).
The Assembly’s warning comes as the National Audit Office this week said that up to 60 per cent of buildings with dangerous cladding have still not been identified by the Government, and at the current rate of progress it was due to miss its own estimated completion date of 2035 for the works.
Ms Bokhari said: “The measures [recommended by the Grenfell Tower Inquiry] will only be effective if fire and rescue services, and those responsible for fixing fire safety issues, have the money they need.
“That includes proper funding to enforce any new regulations, so that anyone failing to implement the lessons of the Grenfell Tragedy is held to account and compelled to take action to protect the public.
“It is encouraging that the deputy mayor for fire has raised the issue of funding with the Government. We hope that the mayor continues to make that case to the Government and supports London Fire Brigade (LFB) funding requests to meet the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry as part of his budget process.”
LFB commissioner Andy Roe told the committee in September that when it comes to tall buildings, fire safety regulations are “still not good enough” and there remains a need for more “teeth” for authorities enforcing the rules.
But he warned that these and other improvements are “going to have to be paid for, because that will not come for free”.
One of the Inquiry’s recommendations was for a “College of Fire and Rescue” to be established, in order to provide brigades with “education and training across the board to nationally approved standards”.
Mr Roe said any such college “has to be properly funded, it has to be physically located - whether in one place or a number of centres of excellence, because already good training centres exist… and it has to be staffed by genuine experts… because that is how you are going to drive that change in a way that is profound and will have a proper impact”.
Mr Khan’s deputy mayor for fire, Jules Pipe, backed Mr Roe in calling for more resources to be invested into the regulatory system. He told the committee that this had been raised in an initial roundtable discussion with Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, held after the fire which broke out at a tower block in Dagenham in late August.
But the deputy mayor warned: “It is going to come back to money. Training costs money. Equipment costs money...
“The amount of time and effort that is going to go into changing regimes and testing the regulatory regime and the bolstering of resources that will need to make the BSR [Building Safety Regulator] effective, all those points were landed, but the challenge for the Government is going to be finding the money to implement those.”
Approached for a response to the Assembly’s concerns, a spokeswoman for Mr Khan: “Everyone deserves the right to live in a safe home – a right that was tragically denied to the residents of Grenfell Tower due to unsafe cladding.
“Seven years on, it’s shameful that thousands of people across London and the country are still living in fear due to dangerous cladding on their homes as a result of the previous Government dragging their feet on remediation.
“The new Government is taking immediate action, committing £1bn at the Budget to remove unsafe cladding from buildings. We will work closely with ministers, local authorities, London Fire Brigade and regulators on this work to help ensure change is delivered without any further delay.”
