By The Welsh Government has announced it will fund fire safety surveys for multi-occupied buildings over 11 metres to ensure the highest standard of safety for residents.
Minister for Climate Change Julie James confirmed the surveys will be funded by the Welsh Building Safety Fund and called on the UK Government to confirm when further consequential funding will come to Wales.
All buildings over 11m will be eligible to apply with high rise buildings (18m+) prioritised initially.
The surveys will go beyond cladding issues including assessing internal issues such as ineffective compartmentation.
Minister for Climate Change, with responsibility for housing, Julie James said:
“What we do not yet know is exactly how many buildings are affected and to what extent.”
“It is critically important that we are able to understand the true scale of the problem in order to properly address it.”
“Every building is different and the fire safety surveys will identify what measures and actions are required to make a multi-residential building as safe as it can be and protect lives and property in the event of a fire.”
Steps have already been taken to address these complex challenges, including ensuring all identified buildings in Wales with ACM cladding have been remediated at no additional cost to leaseholders.
£10.5m was also made available last year to remediate affected buildings in the social sector which saw 12 buildings access this support.
The findings from the surveys will inform the creation of a ‘Fire Safety Building Passport’ which will be developed by those responsible for buildings and will set out what defects have been identified, what remedial action is required and when fire safety measures need to be implemented.
It will also outline how recommended works align with other works required for the building, including planned maintenance and potential decarbonisation measures.
The scheme will be open for applications from responsible persons, building owners and/or management companies this autumn.
The Welsh Building Safety Fund is being developed in tandem with legislative plans to reform the existing building safety system to ensure residents of multi-occupied buildings in Wales do not encounter these problems in the future.
There is an irrational obsession with cladding issues.
Granted this needs remediation.
BUT construction defects revealed by surveys are for more important to fix.
Just remediating cladding doesn’t restore the flat value.
Only by remediation of all defects will flats be worth anything.
Only a fool would buy a flat unless they know for certain the building is free of defects such that a mortgage valuer would be prepared to offer a mortgage
If you owned a flat which is now un sellable thru no fault you would be very grateful for any obsession which serves to make you feel more secure in the knowledge that Jenrick who has already been proven guilty of misleading the public as evidenced by his performance of supporting a developer on the isle of dogs has no interest in any of the many leaseholders who are in severe financial hardship Cladding and other defects in high rise apartments is a scandal of catastrophic proportion , the developers need to BE FORCED TO PAY NOW THE COST OF FULL REMEDIATION