Developers who covered tower blocks in unsafe cladding have paid back less than 3% of the cash lent out by the government to make buildings safe, sparking accusations they are “getting away with it”.
Ministers have so far handed landlords £199m to strip flammable ACM (aluminium composite material) panels from 98 tower blocks under the Private Sector ACM Cladding Remediation Fund. ACM cladding helped spread the 2017 blaze at Grenfell Tower in west London that killed 72 people.
In exchange for the loans, landlords were supposed to take “all reasonable steps” to recover the money from the parties responsible for installing the dangerous cladding in the first place, and then repay the public purse.
