Background
In June 2017, the Grenfell Tower fire claimed the lives of 72 people. Phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry found that the presence of aluminium composite material cladding had played a significant role in the spread of the fire. Since Grenfell, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) has launched a range of schemes and committed £5.1 billion to remove and replace dangerous cladding.
Since 2022, DLUHC has expanded the number and scope of its remediation schemes. It has also announced key principles for its approach including holding building owners and developers to account for sharing in the costs of fixing dangerous cladding. It also protects leaseholders from liability for fixing building safety problems that they did not cause. DLUHC intends that £5.1 billion will be the limit of taxpayer contributions to remediation.
In 2020, the Public Accounts Committee described progress with cladding remediation as “unacceptably slow”. By January 2024, DLUHC reported that almost 4,000 buildings were within the scope of its schemes, of which nearly 800 had completed remediation.
Scope
This study will follow up on our 2020 investigation into remediating dangerous cladding on high-rise buildings. We will examine whether the cladding remediation portfolio is completing timely remediation of unsafe buildings at reasonable cost to the taxpayer, including:
- how well DLUHC has designed its schemes to maximise the identification and remediation of unsafe buildings
- whether remediation of unsafe buildings is progressing as expected
- how well DLUHC is managing the taxpayer’s exposure to remediation costs across the lifetime of the programme
NAO Team
Director: Helen Hodgson
Audit Manager: Joanna Lewis