Contribution
I thank the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) for securing this debate and for the excellent way that he presented the case. This issue causes unbelievable levels of stress for many of our constituents.
We should briefly contrast the complications of getting remedial action to bring about safety and security for our constituents in multiple-ownership private sector developments with the relative speed and efficiency with which local authorities dealt with the problem of cladding after Grenfell. My own borough of Islington surveyed every property immediately, discovered unknown suspect cladding in a couple of places, and got on with it straight away. The issue was resolved very quickly. That was in 2018, but here we are, eight years later, and I have a considerable number of leasehold properties that have been built over the last 20 years or so where the residents, as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath pointed out, want to move on but cannot move or sell, and are paying massive insurance costs.
I say to the Minister that the excessive insurance costs many residents are having to pay are not their fault. The problem should absolutely not be their responsibility; it should be the responsibility of the developers that caused it in the first place. If those developers no longer exist or are not prepared to pay, surely the default position should be that the Government as a whole are prepared to pick up that compensation. People are getting deeply into debt just to insure their own flat, but at the same time cannot move on.
I want to make some quick points about local issues that I have raised many times with the Government. The first is about the Drayton Park development. I thank the Minister and her predecessors for at last getting to a situation where Government funding has been approved for Galliard Homes to help cover part of the fire remediation costs. I would be grateful if the Minister could assure me how quickly that work will now be completed. It has been subject to endless correspondence between my office, the local authority and many others just to try and get that remedial work done for the properties on Drayton Park in my constituency.
Secondly, there are the works that need to be done for Newlon Housing on the Queensland Road site, which is adjacent to the Arsenal football ground. Remediation works have been delayed, apparently mostly because of delays and complications created by Newlon. Again, I have raised this directly with the Minister and her predecessors, and I would be grateful if she could assure me that that work will now be done. Many lease extensions have been granted over the years, but the complication is that the people living there have not seen the work done. Now their lease is being eaten up as the years go by, and the value of the place is reducing, so they are losing out in lots of ways. That leads on to the wider issue of leasehold reform, but that is not the subject of today’s debate.
The final issue I want to raise is one that I have raised many times in the past, and I am quite unclear where we have reached on it. At Highbury Gardens, where Aviva is the head lessor, there was an issue about wooden railings on balconies that were deemed to be a fire risk. That issue has gone on for a very long time, and once again, the residents are stuck without any certainty about their future.
I will not take much more time, but I will just say that we have a responsibility to get this done quickly. When the fire happened at Grenfell, an enormous shock was felt all over the country. Everything that happened at Grenfell was disgusting and disgraceful—we know that, and we do not want another Grenfell anywhere else. Local authorities have managed, by and large, to get the issue sorted out, but it is the miasma of insurance companies, leaseholders, ultimate freeholders, developers that disappear and go bust, and fire safety engineers who are in short supply or, in many places, non-existent that is the problem. At the end of the day, all the stress lands on our constituents. That is not right or fair and we need to get it sorted.