The minister’s promise that many more leaseholders will not have to pay for repairs is heartening, but flaws in his proposal must be addressed
On Monday, Michael Gove stood up in parliament and made a promise that was long overdue: no person living in a building higher than 11 metres in England will be forced to pay for dangerous cladding to be removed from their building. The announcement by the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities is a huge victory for cladding campaigners, but the fight is not over.
His was a point so obvious that it shouldn’t need making. However, the government has dragged its heels in the years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which led to hundreds of thousands of leaseholders facing the prospect of having to pay tens of thousands of pounds to fix previously unknown safety defects with their buildings.
Lucie Heath is the deputy news editor of Inside Housing
