Thank you so much for your editorial on the seemingly forgotten cladding scandal (5 February). Apart from the fear of living in a flammable building, there is also the endless financial rip-off of paying increased building insurance. My daughter’s building insurance premium has risen 1,000%. The government has done little to help apart from talk to the insurance industry, while continuing to enjoy a bonanza in insurance premium tax, generated from leaseholders’ pockets.
As for the few buildings that have been fixed, during remediation work lasting many months families will have been living in freezing flats with all insulation removed and natural daylight blocked off, on what is in effect a building site.
Whether flats are actually to be made safe, or just affordably less dangerous, is another matter. The fiasco surrounding external wall surveys, or EWS1 certificates, revealed so many major building safety defects that these are now being downgraded. The government has failed leaseholders at every turn and, despite Michael Gove’s rhetoric, continues to do so.
Lynne Hamshaw
Frithville, Lincolnshire
