Article by Liam Spender, LKP Trustee and a leaseholder at the St. David’s Square estate referred to in the article.
Leaseholders at 173 buildings managed by FirstPort in England are being charged fees for applications to the taxpayer-financed Building Safety Fund (BSF) and for other fire safety inspections.
FirstPort has not responded to questions about how much leaseholders have been charged in total. LKP calculates that it is at least £39,444, assuming each of the 173 buildings has only been charged the lowest possible fee.
Under 18 metre high buildings have been dragged into the building safety crisis whether they have cladding or not. Now they are decreed safe by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick, in spite of the evidence of many build defects which contravened every regulation. But will fire authorities, banks and insurers pay any attention? After all, as Ted Boilleau, ex-premier of Victoria in Australia, told MPs in the leasehold APPG: “The fact is, we have been building crap.”
By Martin Boyd
On July 21 Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick boldly announced a complete reversal on something over which government has very limited control: the need or not for blocks of flats under 18 meters to have an EWS (external wall survey).
A demonstration of all leaseholders is to take place outside Parliament on September 16 at 1pm.
The aim is to urge on MPs the vital importance of reforming this disastrous system of property tenure, which explains the unending misery heaped on flat owners in England and Wales by the cladding / building safety scandal.
Scotland, which does not have this rip-off form of tenancy, will follow the Australian approach to the cladding crisis: it has already sorted most of these issues out, whereas England is fumbling around in the dark, four years after Grenfell.
