So what did all that mean?
Big picture:
1) If I were an affected leaseholder I'd be more confident after today that I won't be footing the bill for fire safety works.
2) I'd be less confident about when I'll be able to finally move on, sell my flat and the process concludes.
Big picture:
1) If I were an affected leaseholder I'd be more confident after today that I won't be footing the bill for fire safety works.
2) I'd be less confident about when I'll be able to finally move on, sell my flat and the process concludes.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1480564139974176776
3) And the rest of us can be almost clueless as to whether i) developers will actually pay ii) how much iii) when iv) what the process will be/how it will be calculated v) whether the taxpayer ultimately will have to step in
Because ultimately what Gove announced today was an important change of principle but little in the way of concrete detail as to how it will be achieved
Ie Gove announced leaseholders not on hook for anything, cladding or otherwise (mega important) but then...
Ie Gove announced leaseholders not on hook for anything, cladding or otherwise (mega important) but then...
...in terms of how that would be realised in terms of funding he just said that he'd be having meetings with developers. In terms of protections for leaseholders for non-cladding said they'd be protected in statute but not how and ergo who would pay for non-cladding works.
We can't know how successful the attempt to raise funds from developers will be, not least because it will be fiendishly complicated to calculate liability. Some firms will have gone bust, some will have built more flats than others, some will have already paid for some...
...remediations. Sometimes product manufacturers will be at fault, where does the freeholder come in and so on and so on. This could drag on for a long time and my understanding is that the dept doesn't know yet how it will calculate these liabilities.
And this is where the main point of tension between Gove and @lisanandy arose in the House. She referred to the story I broke on Friday and quoted the letter from HMT to DLUHC. MG has been touring the studios today saying that if developers won't pay ...
https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1480583769027399680?s=20
...then the backstop is making them pay via tax. That isn't what the HMT letter says. They say the backstop is DLUHC budgets being used to plug the gap. So we have the prospect of say the social housing budget being raided to pay for remediation. .
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1479547522712580108?s=20
As HMT says in the letter in circs DLUHC cannot raise enough money from developers they should prioritise "safety over supply." That's a big shift for a govt with 300k housing start target a year and in a country with a massive housing supply crisis (as a well as a safety one).
MG did not categorically rule out the idea of social housing budgets having to be used on the floor of the House. This, alongside developer profits being used to pay for repairs, is perhaps the biggest potential net effect of today's announcements...
...and HMT's refusal to put up any more public money to cover the costs: that there may be significantly less money available for house building in the years ahead. The building safety crisis and the housing supply crisis fusing.
In the long term that could push up housing....
In the long term that could push up housing....
...benefit bills and have all sorts of other effects and HMT has to pick up the bill in another form. But wouldn't be the first time HMT prioritised short term parsimony over the longer term picture...
But, as I say, today clearly a big if as yet incomplete victory for those who have campaigned on this and have had lives blighted for so very long. One bigger question is why it took Whitehall so long to accept what nearly everyone affected, or those of us reporting on...
...or looking at this problem realised in a few seconds flat: that it the injustice of leaseholders' picking up the tab was so profound, that it couldn't ever stand. Lives and mental (and physical health) have been ruined for so many in the interim. And it isn't over yet.
Important stuff here from Ben on lenders' role in all this
https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/1480620171651915776?s=20
Dust settling now but phone been buzzing over last 24 hours with messages from leaseholders. It’s been such a long road for so many. Reaction almost universal: weary acceptance that this isn’t the end of the road. Guarded optimism that an end might at last be imaginable.
We're not ending our coverage on this story though, not by a long way and not until it reaches its conclusion.
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