Taxpayer ‘faces multimillion-pound Help to Buy losses’ on cladded towers

Arklight

lisyloo wrote: »

I haven't had time to research the articles but aren't the contractors who put the cladding in place liable and wouldn't they have insurance??


When I paid for my solar panels I made sure that the insurance in place was not dependant on the supplier staying in business.



Why is there no insurance in these cases?
Or was that a lack of due dillegence too?

The cladding was compliant at the time of construction.

It wouldn't have been compliant if the Tories hadn't repeatedly slashed funding for fire safety to the point that entire developments are now signed off by relatively unqualified council employees with no fire brigade input.

Grenfell would not have been signed off under the old regime. Both the London fire brigade and the people who used to do fire inspection for Islington Council have been very clear about that.

As the taxpayers who are now on the hook for this are the same taxpayers who repeatedly vote for "tax cut" Tory governments, without any apparent consciousness of the real world cost of those cuts, it seems fair they pay.

Of course, it's fairly disappointing for those of us who don't think Theresa May and Boris Johnson are fit to be anywhere near office, but that's democracy for you.

patman99

The main thing about the cladding on the Grenfall tower was that the manufacturers had had it properly tested and it met the highest fire retardentcy ratings.


However, this rating was only valid if the cladding was fitted directly against the wall with no air gap.


In Colchester, Essex University commissioned a development of near-800 student lets called 'The Maltings'. Most of these buildings are cladd in 100mm thick polystyrene pre-dyed to look like render. This has been fixed to the wall without any air gap, so in theory, should not go up like the Grenfell cladding.


Bearing in mind that the air gap is usually down to the way the cladding panels are fixed, (the usual method is to place a hanging rail on the wall and a bracket on each panel that simply slots over the rail), eliminating the air gap should be as easy as removing the panel, replacing the insulation with something thick enough to sit against the wall, then dropping the panel back in place.

stator

patman99 wrote: »

The main thing about the cladding on the Grenfall tower was that the manufacturers had had it properly tested and it met the highest fire retardentcy ratings.

I thought they had changed the chemical formula since the insulation gained it's approval and that the actual product fitted would have failed the test because of these changes?