Michael Gove has demanded cladding and insulation manufacturers pay to fix unsafe buildings – or face being banned from the country.
The Housing Secretary wrote to the Construction Products Association warning he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to ensure they take responsibility.
He said he would prohibit those who refused from operating in Britain and ‘pursue’ firms that are ‘unwilling to do the right thing now’.
The minister said: ‘There is no future for those companies and directors who are not fully committed to upholding the safety of residents and fixing past wrongs.’
Gove demanded that property developers pay for changes in homes deemed unsafe following the Grenfell Tower disaster.
More than a hundred residents at The Decks, a six-building development in Runcorn, Cheshire, are set to be spared bills of up to £40,000 each
He is now focusing on the companies that provide raw materials. These are being replaced at a high price. The minister is calling on manufacturers to take part in the safety of buildings for the first time.
The Daily Mail has launched a campaign to demand justice for all those who are trapped inside unsafe buildings following the 2017 Grenfell fire that left 72 people dead in west London.
Evidence about the ‘culture and practices’ of major cladding and insulation manufacturers has been ‘extremely alarming’, he wrote.
They have until March to make a funding commitment to repair buildings rather than leave costs with ‘innocent leaseholders’.
Mr Gove wrote: ‘The cladding and insulation sector has an unquestionable responsibility for contributing to the remediation of their unsafe cladding products and must now come forwards with proposals to account for this.’
He said the total cost of removing unsafe cladding was now more than £9billion. He said that Grenfell Tower-cladding firms had earned millions of dollars.
Giles Grover, of the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign, welcomed Mr Gove’s attempts to put pressure on developers to ‘provide real help to innocent leaseholders’, but added: ‘We need to see this actually lead to firm action.’