UK Construction & Engineering: Cladding Crisis and Latest Government Intervention

By Vijay Bange

There was considerable interest as to what more the Government will do in its effort to tackle the issue of high rise residential buildings with dangerous cladding, and further measures to help the plight of long leaseholders who are facing significant costs to undertake necessary fire safety remedial works.

On Wednesday 10th February, Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary announced that in addition to the £1.6bn the Government had pledged last year for removal of dangerous cladding, a further £3.5bn will be set aside. Is this enough to fix what is mooted to be a £15bn problem? Continue reading “UK Construction & Engineering: Cladding Crisis and Latest Government Intervention”

UK Construction & Engineering: Safer Construction Materials- A New National Regulator

By Vijay Bange

Following our recent blog concerning the challenges and issues in the construction industry arising post Grenfell and the Dame Hackitt Review, the Government continues with its mission to tackle some root safety concerns. One of the many recommendations made was that more needs to be done to ensure that construction products are robustly tested, certified and labelled, and that there needs to be  a more robust regulatory framework to police this. Furthermore, to ensure that there is greater accountability for those manufacturing and /or selling dangerous building products.

The Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, announced on 19th January 2021[1] the establishment and funding of a national regulator[2] working closely with the Building Safety Regulator and trading standards, and indeed other regulators, whose remit would be to ensure that safer materials are used to build homes. The issue is no longer limited just to dangerous cladding and is more wholesale. This was a scathing, and candid, account of the perceived deficiencies in the industry. Separately, the government has also commissioned a panel of experts to look into the fitness of testing regimes for construction products, and tackling abuse of testing products used for construction, and it is anticipated that this review will report its findings this year. Potentially, this too may result in further changes to the relevant regulations. What is evident is that there is a multi-pronged effort to make changes to implement safety concerns post Grenfell, and implement the measures arising from the Dame Hackitt Review.

Continue reading “UK Construction & Engineering: Safer Construction Materials- A New National Regulator”

UK Construction & Engineering: The cladding catastrophe car crash!

By Vijay Bange and Tanya Chadha

2020 will be forever synonymous with the global pandemic. The end of the year saw the approval of vaccines and with that a hope to an end, or at least the taming, of the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst this has dominated the media in 2020, there has been momentum in the press and Parliament about the continuing problem of dangerous cladding.

A summary of the unfolding story board is below.

Continue reading “UK Construction & Engineering: The cladding catastrophe car crash!”

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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