Fire Safety Bill: official EOCS statement

Despite our best efforts, the Fire Safety Bill has passed without amendment. Here is the official EOCS response to this development.

The Government has fought hard against amendments put forward to save leaseholders from widespread bankruptcy and financial ruin caused by bad regulations, corporate malfeasance and shoddy building work. If only they had bothered to work half as hard to protect us.

This Bill pulls the rug out from under a generation of homeowners. MCHLG knows it. MPs and peers know it. Christopher Pincher, Lord Greenhalgh and Robert Jenrick – whatever tired lines they may repeat at the despatch box – know it. And leaseholders, many of whom have already seen large bills landing on their doorsteps, know it only too well.

The headlines may focus on the huge costs of this crisis but this has always been as much a moral issue as it is a financial one. Leaseholders simply cannot pay these huge costs – and nor should they have to.

But as much as the Government is gambling with our finances, it is also gambling with our lives. Nearly four years after Grenfell, thousands of buildings across the UK are still covered with combustible materials and are structurally unable to withstand fire. The fear of going bankrupt is nothing in comparison to the real and ongoing terror many of us experience when we lie in bed at night, trying to sleep, hoping this nightmare will end one day.

To quote Lady Pinnock, the cladding scandal comes down, fundamentally, to a simple question of justice. We will keep fighting until we have this justice. We can’t afford not to.