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Immediate thoughts.
Injuries / deaths by residential fires. Number historically declines over time because net, everything has become on average safer.
So I think this is primarily an insurance problem. I think that only in extreme cases will remedial works be required.
I suspect this is something the Tories could resolve. It's going to take time though.
Howard-
So I think this is primarily an insurance problem.
Yeah, I agree.
The number of genuinely comparable to Grenfell buildings is not huge, but significant. These will need to be addressed through remedial works. The rest will eventually be sorted out through insurer / regulator negotiations.
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This
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It's definitely an insurance problem, one of the big catalysts at the moment is surveyors are being told their PI insurance won't cover them when signing off EWS1 forms.
But it's also a valuation problem. The average block is going to drop in value by x% because at some point leaseholders are going to be hit with a bill for remediation works, and whomever is the leaseholder at the time will be left holding the can.
This could paralyse the bottom rung of the housing market.
ChasnotRobert
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EWS1 Update:
No chance of selling my flat now. Guidance was changed yesterday to bring all buildings with any type of EWS into scope.
Here is my prediction: Homeowners in blocks of flats are canaries in the coal mine for what is about to happen. Since about the 1980s buildings have been constructed as concrete and steel structures skinned with all sorts of materials and insulated between skin and structure. Fire regs have been woefully inadequate and the insulation underneath all those skins is not going to pass the combustibility tests of the post-Grenfell era especially when you consider that building materials have often been substituted by profit incentivised home builders, for similar materials that are cheaper than those spec'd by the Architects. Few records have been kept of these so invasive examinations will need to be conducted at which point 10's of thousands of buildings will be condemned to nil valuations, making them unmortgageable.
This will start in blocks of flats and quickly spread to commercial buildings causing a huge property crisis. It is of the governments making having rushed through legislation post-Grenfell with little understanding of the process for building regs and the amount of bad-buildings in 'the system'.
The cost for reparation will need to be borne by one of 3 groups; the freeholders, the leaseholders or the government. The freeholders are likely to be slippery and if necessary will become insolvent washing their hands of the responsibility, the leaseholders will bear the cost through insurance premiums but the government will likely have to foot the 10's of £B's necessary to make the repairs.