Video Transcription:
I want to move on to cladding and I’ve put the cladding rant here but I think one of these is one of the keys and it may be the biggest thing that you never knew about. Basically what we talk about cladding, if you look at a building the outside of the building is oftentimes it’s got fixtures, now if you think about Grenfell Tower that actually was the cladding that burnt up. And what they’ve realised is the building standards they’ve had for the last 30 to 40 years are not really appropriate.
Now the issue is they want to replace this. But I think the interesting thing is 150 year wait to replace all claddings so flats can be sold. What do they mean by that? well I’ll come to it in a sec okay but keep that in mind 150 years.
Not all sellers are equal why cladding changes are urgently needed to free up the uk property market right now I think it’s over 18 meters that has a if you want to sell a property you need to go and get a report an EWS1 report and this is the dilemma 3,000 blocks are potentially dangerous, the government said that it’s 2957 or whatever but semantics it’s a lot of buildings that need to be checked and make sure they’re compliant and the ones that aren’t they need to replace the cladding. It’s a massive, massive problem.
Interestingly the same things happen in Australia you know that article is actually from Australia. They’re facing the same problems where you know that the cladding that was back then is actually that’s being implemented is flammable. Whether it was flammable back then the way fires worked but it is now who knows. The fact is that it’s dangerous because it’s not built. You know building’s not built to have the fire go up the outside. Everything is about keeping the fire on the inside, so having a flammable thing on the outside just pulls all the oxygen out and obviously you get a Grenfell Tower which nobody wants to have a repeat on.
The real problem is the cost now I’ve seen 4 billion, I’ve seen 15 billion, I’ve seen 19 billion I’ve seen all sorts of figures. Who’s going to pay? Realistically it is the leaseholders or the freeholders whoever owns the building so if you own an apartment in a building. This is the issue if you want to sell a property now you need to get that EWS1 report and give it to the lender or to the solicitor who will then confirm with the lender they have it the lender won’t lend otherwise. So if you want to get a mortgage you’re not going to get it unless you have that EWS1 the other side of it is the other solicitor is not going to let you exchange or complete on a property until that EWS1 report is in place. So that is stalling so many sales right now and you know we’ve got a number of clients who are affected by this. And this is the problem trying to get someone to go out and do the report is the delay right now. It’s not even about you could have perfect cladding, but because you can’t get because there’s such a backlog and this is the problem the same thing is happening with the EICRs the same things happen with all these sort of things services where the government just says right we’re changing and then doesn’t think about well hold on a sec you’ve got to get this many properties through that new system and it’s just creating backlogs. That’s the drama and then what they do is they make it so you know punitive you know like if someone needs to sell their property and they cannot sell it because they cannot get someone to go in and it could be a you know 100 or what was it 15-year wait or 150-year wait you know it’s ridiculous and that is the problem with cladding right now. So if you’re not aware of it and you want to know more about that then you know by all means contact the team and but the reality is probably contact your Solicitor if you’re looking to sell because you may need about three to six months before you get somebody in to get the report to get it back to actually be able to sell your property all right it is a real big problem. Right now the government’s put a billion pounds at it but a billion pounds is a drop in the ocean it seems and it’s not really getting anywhere with it so that’s the real issue right now.
October 29