England’s dangerous cladding could cost £22bn to rectify, watchdog finds

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Work to make England’s multistorey residential buildings safe from dangerous cladding could cost up to £22.4bn, the UK’s spending watchdog has revealed.

The high-end estimate figure highlights the enormous potential cost of the UK’s external cladding problem, which lay behind the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people.

At the low-end, the estimated cost of remediating dangerous cladding was £12.6bn, the National Audit Office said in a report on Monday.

The report also warned that work to remediate problems on buildings more than 11 metres tall was unlikely to be completed by a deadline of 2035.

The NAO said 60 per cent of the buildings needing remediation work had yet to be identified.

“Considerable uncertainty remains regarding the number of buildings needing remediation, costs, timelines and recouping public spending,” said Gareth Davies, head of the NAO.

Most of the cost of fixing thousands of buildings across England with exterior cladding that could cause fire to spread is meant to be borne by building owners and developers.

But the UK government is set to fund £9.1bn of upfront costs, which it intends to reduce to £5.1bn through a levy on the property sector.

There have been fierce arguments among ministers, developers and owners of leasehold properties in buildings over apportioning the cost of the work.

Davies said that putting the onus on developers to pay should help to protect taxpayers’ money. But he added: “It has also created grounds for dispute, causing delays.”

Ministers are currently seeking to ensure dangerous cladding is removed from all buildings taller than 11 metres — those thought to pose the greatest risk — by 2035.

The NAO said that 98 per cent of “high-rise” buildings — more than 18 metres high — had been identified and that “progress” had been made in tackling dangerous cladding in the seven years since the Grenfell fire.

But there was no mandatory registration for “medium-rise” buildings of between 11 and 18 metres, meaning that many of those had not been identified, the watchdog’s report noted.

As a result, the report said, as of August this year only 4,771 buildings more than 11 metres tall needing remediation had been identified.

That figure might be as low as 40 per cent of the total of between 9,000 and 12,000 medium and high-rise buildings that the government estimated would need some remediation work.

Responding to the report, Alex Norris, building safety minister, said the pace of remediation had been “unacceptably slow” and promised to publish a “building remediation acceleration plan” soon.

“This government is taking action — meeting our commitment to invest £5.1bn to remove dangerous cladding and making sure those responsible pay for the rest,” Norris said.

The NAO warned that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government would need to “manage risks” to keep its spending on remediation below £5.1bn.

It was unclear how much the building safety levy, meant to raise most of the funds, would generate, the NAO said. Builders are not due to start paying the levy until autumn next year at the earliest.