At the meeting of Salford City Council's Growth and Prosperity Scrutiny Panel on Tuesday night, councillors were told that cladding, insulation and interior works, including the fitting of sprinklers, for the nine Pendleton blocks at the centre of the city's Grenfell-style hotspot, won't be complete until 2022.
All of the dangerous cladding has now been removed from the nine blocks owned by Salford City Council and managed by Pendleton Together, councillors were told by Dylan Vince from the Council's Housing Team, and 'enabling' works for the new cladding system has also commenced, although additional work was required at Thorn and Spruce Court to alter a steel structure so that the cladding could be added. Work to replace the actual cladding, however, won't start until the spring and will take over a year.
The COVID-19 pandemic, he explained, had delayed interior fire safety works but work on communal areas and corridors will start in January. As such, fire marshals are still in place. Over two hundred responses from tenants to a works survey by Pendleton Together unsurprisingly revealed that "residents wanted to see works completed as soon as possible" Vince announced.
Meanwhile, respite facilities for vulnerable residents who have work ongoing in their flats had been 'limited' due to the pandemic but 'extra temporary structures' are being considered to fill the gaps. Vince added that winter fuel payments are being paid to residents without insulation, although he failed to mention initially that this was only £25 per month.
In response, Councillor Robin Garrido, announced that he was "absolutely staggered that we're now talking about 2022 before completion...
"The residents in these flats have now been waiting for over three years for this work to be done" he said "...I'd like some feedback on why it's taking such an astronomical length of time – these people have been living in fear..."
Vince spoke of the complexities of the PFI (Private Finance Initiative) and the impact of COVID-19 for the delays, but Garrido was having none of it, declaring that the construction industry was working throughout the pandemic, and that he found it "incredible that we can treat people like this..."
In response, Salford Council's Strategic Director Ben Dolan refused to apologise for a "comprehensive works programme that take 150 weeks, to the extent of both cladding, insulation and framework removal and replacement works, and the whole comprehensive list of internal works required on all nine Pendleton blocks.
"Our primary aim is that works are completed to a quality that doesn't leave us in what has been a horrible position for residents, the Council and everyone involved" he said, adding that it wasn't a simple task of taking cladding off and putting cladding on.
Others councillors on the committee blamed the Government for 'roadblocks' and not sorting out its own policy on building safety. The meeting ended with Councillor Hesling remarking that the heating system in the blocks depended on high levels of insulation, "So obviously we are very concerned to make sure that residents are warm enough in their homes and that they are getting the right levels of compensation"...
As politicians and officers discuss, Tenant Claim – 'Campaigning for hazard free homes for all in Salford' - has moved to represent tenants, not only in Pendleton but all of Salford...
"Salford tenants no longer have to put up with landlords ignoring the disrepair of their properties and their safety" the company states "Tenant Claim and our Salford based solicitors are representing tenants across Salford on a no charge to tenant basis. Salford Local Authority properties are amongst some of the worst maintained in the country with countless safety hazards, including fire hazards, that are not being addressed by the local authorities, despite many tenants complaining for years".
Anyone interested in Tenant Claim can click here for more information.
Pendleton is also set to be the subject of a breakout group at a national conference organised by Fuel Poverty Action called Making Green Come True on Saturday 5th December which will be discussing 'insulation and safe homes', while hearing stories from Salford tenants about their experiences in the Listening To Residents session.
For further details of the Fuel Poverty Action Conference – click here
And finally, the Greater Manchester High Rise Task Force, chaired by Salford City Mayor, Paul Dennett, has called today for the Government to fix its Building Safety Bill which is supposed to reform the current regulatory system which led to Grenfell Tower tragedy and the Pendleton mess, plus numerous problems in blocks with privately owned apartments.
The House of Commons' Homes, Communities and Local Government Committee carried out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and the GM High Rise Task Force submitted evidence highlighting numerous areas that need to be urgently addressed, including 'the scope being too narrow, a failure to prevent developers choosing their own regulator and failure to protect residents facing life changing bills to make their homes safe'.
The subsequent report from the Committee, issued today, recommends the Government commit to protecting leaseholders from the costs of repairing historic fire safety defects; doing more to ensure those working on the design and construction of buildings are competent and preventing developers from choosing their own regulator for all new buildings. The Committee has also urged the Government to set out more of the details as to how a new regulatory regime will work in practice.
"Despite the mantra 'residents should not pay' repeated by successive Ministers including the Housing Minister today, the Government's focus has clearly moved away from protecting residents caught up the industrial scale regulatory crisis facing the country" says Dennett "...It is shocking that the Bill does not protect residents from costs of historic defects. It is a failure of regulation that has trapped residents. It is an ongoing failure of Government not to hold those responsible to account and make them liable for the costs of remediating the dangerous buildings that they have profited from. This is something the Government must now urgently address as we are now three and a half years on from the tragic fire at Grenfell which claimed 72 innocent lives.
"I remain extremely concerned that the failure of the Government to take steps to improve the whole system leaves room for developers to continue to choose their own regulators with no effective enforcement in many cases and will lead to illogical and unjustifiable distinctions between the requirements for different buildings" he adds "The Committee's recommendation that the choice of regulator be removed from the building control system is welcome and I hope the Government will act on this."
Salford City Council has never released the paperwork that stated the building works on the Pendleton blocks was safe, despite Freedom of Information requests. The company that carried out the Building Control inspection had been outsourced by Salford City Council.
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