The government’s race to remediate unsafe homes: the promises and pitfalls
By Andrew Mellor2024-12-23T05:00:00
Andrew Mellor examines the government’s latest plan to accelerate building remediation, questioning whether speed can be achieved without compromising safety and quality
The government recently published its Remediation Acceleration Plan, which relates to the external walls of multi-occupancy residential buildings over 11m in height. The published plan is the first stage of the proposals by the government to “fix buildings faster” and “to remediate at pace” to ensure that the risks and costs to residents of living in buildings that are deemed unsafe are reduced as quickly as possible. It is proposed that the second phase of the plan will be published in summer 2025.
Although I completely agree that the buildings must be remediated as soon as possible, the use of the word ‘pace’ is a little worrying, as we do not want to be remediating buildings only to have to remediate them again due to non-compliance or poor-quality construction work. This has happened with some of the buildings that were remediated in the first years following the Grenfell tragedy.
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