The UN has warned that the UK may be in breach of international law for failing to remove dangerous flammable cladding from residential buildings following the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017.
On 29 April this year, Leilani Farha, then the UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, wrote to the British government expressing concern about its continued inaction on the cladding and its effects on residents’ rights under international law. The letter was made public on 29 June following the government’s failure to respond.
GOVERNMENT ACTION TO REMOVE CLADDING
Following the fire at Grenfell Tower, in which 72 people were killed, ministers pledged that all buildings with similar dangerous cladding would have it removed by June 2020. Yet by that deadline, only 46% of buildings with ACM cladding - the same type used in Grenfell Tower - had had that cladding removed, and 600,000 people were still living in buildings with flammable cladding.
Despite promises of £400 million for removing ACM cladding in social housing, by 2020 only £133 million had been spent and less than half of the 154 affected blocks had been remediated. Of the £200 million earmarked for removing the cladding in private housing, only £1.4 million had been spent and 14% of blocks remediated.
EFFECTS OF DANGEROUS CLADDING ON RESIDENTS
Until the cladding is removed, leaseholders’ homes cannot be mortgaged or sold, and many people face costs of up to £24,000 a month per building for fire monitoring as part of their building insurance.
Residents have claimed that the procedure for accessing government funding is “tortuous,” requiring them to pay tens of thousands of pounds for surveying and hiring contractors as part of their application. There are claims that, even where leaseholders have been found eligible for government funding, funds have not been made available. As a result, many are having to choose between paying for the cladding removal themselves or forfeiting their lease. This has led Farha to express concerns that residents would be made “homeless at a time when the Government has issued a nationwide lockdown in order to fight the Coronavirus pandemic”.
The issue is clearly having a serious effect on residents’ well-being: when surveyed, 87.8% of respondents reported that their mental health was worse than before the cladding was recognised as dangerous, and nearly nine percent reported having had suicidal or self-harming thoughts.
BREACHES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Farha’s letter details the rights of residents who are at risk by the continued presence of the cladding. Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) gives the right to an adequate standard of living and to adequate housing, which requires accommodation to be habitable and to not endanger physical safety.
The state is obligated not only to guarantee adequate housing for social tenants, but also to protect leaseholders from any interference with this right by private landlords and to regulate the private sector to prevent any breaches.
The 72 deaths that resulted from the Grenfell fire demonstrate that safe housing is linked to the right to life. Farha wrote that, where cladding has been shown to be a risk to life, right to life interests are triggered and article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) can be invoked.
The continued failure to remove dangerous cladding not only risks another catastrophic fire - which would endanger residents’ rights to life and adequate safe housing - but risks leaving them homeless if they are unable to meet the onerous costs caused by the cladding. As the UN has now cautioned, this could violate multiple international human rights treaties by which the UK is bound. The question now is how the government will respond, whether the promised funding will be made available, and whether all dangerous cladding will be removed in time to avert a second Grenfell fire.
