The UN has warned Britain that its failure to strip combustible cladding from high-rise buildings containing tens of thousands homes may be a breach of international law.
In a fresh headache for the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, the global body is demanding answers about the UK government’s delayed programme to fix hundreds of blocks wrapped in flammable panels and with other fire safety problems.
Leilani Farha, the UN’s special rapporteur on adequate housing, wrote to the government to express “serious concern about allegations of multiple violations of the human right to adequate housing, of which safety is a key component – contrary to international human rights law”.
Three years after the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives, there are still 300 high-rise residential and publicly owned buildings in England built or refurbished with similar aluminium composite cladding yet to be remediated, official figures show.
Many leaseholders have been living in fear that “Grenfell 2 is in the post”. They face bills as high as £24,000 a month for fire wardens to patrol at night. Freeholders and developers are refusing to pay to fix the problems because legally they are not obliged to.
Hundreds of other high-rise blocks using different combustible, materials including high-pressure laminates also need to be fixed.
Farha said: “Leaseholders’ flats are unmortgageable and unsellable, with many only discovering this when they were in the process of moving home, therefore heavily impacting their lives and consigning them to remain in homes that are at considerable risk from fire.”
Farha’s term as rapporteur has now ended and she has been replaced by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, a professor of law and development at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Nine out of 10 of 550 leaseholders and tenants surveyed by campaigners at the UK Cladding Action Group said their mental health had deteriorated as a result of fire safety problems. Nearly a quarter reported suicidal feelings or considered self-harm as a result of their predicament, which has left apartments unsellable and owners facing crippling bills.
The UN is warning the UK may have breached the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. This includes the “right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing”. Housing should be habitable “with adequate space and protecting them from cold, damp, heat, rain, wind or other threats to health”, it says, whilst also protecting their physical safety.
States that ratified the covenant – as the UK did in 1976 – must show that “every effort has been made to use a maximum of available resources in an effort to discharge their obligations”.
It emerged last week that the government has spent less than a quarter of what it promised to replace dangerous cladding.
Ministers pledged £400m in May 2018 to strip social housing towers of aluminium composite material (ACM) panels. But only £133m has been spent, a National Audit Office report found. Of a further £200m earmarked in May 2019 to fix private blocks, only £1.4m has been spent.
Rituparna Saha, co-founder of UK Cladding Action Group and a resident of Northpoint tower in Bromley, Kent, welcomed the UN intervention, which was made public only after the UK government failed to respond.
“It is unthinkable that millions of innocent people are still forced to live in dangerous, unsafe homes, while being held financially and legally responsible for fixing catastrophic failings in building safety caused by a failure of the government’s building regulations,” Saha said. “The delay in response to this communication further lays bare their reluctance to deal swiftly with this housing crisis which affects human safety. As we are seeing time and time again, fire does not wait, and neither should the government.”
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the government acted quickly to establish a comprehensive building safety programme – the biggest changes to building safety in a generation – to drive up standards and ensure people are safe in their homes.
“We have given an unprecedented £1.6bn to help fund the removal of unsafe cladding from high-rise buildings and we urge building owners, who have a legal responsibility to ensure their buildings are safe, to remove this cladding as quickly as possible.”