"Official" Thread for all of us waiting for a cladding report...

sh1ru

Hi - Has any had any luck with the RICS EWS Form yet?

Silver_Queen

sh1ru wrote: »

Hi - Has any had any luck with the RICS EWS Form yet?

Yes, mine has been accepted. Santander.

sh1ru

Congrats - who was the management company of the building? I've got a pending sale and i'm trying to push L&Q to get it done as soon as. Our Cladding is made up of mineral wool boards which are classified as Non-combustible so should be fairly simple to get the certificate done.

Swiftly

Did you just leave it to your agent and solicitor to sort this all out with L&Q? I'm making slow progress with my sale and am wondering if I should be doing more hassling of L&Q myself.

Silver_Queen

sh1ru wrote: »

Congrats - who was the management company of the building? I've got a pending sale and i'm trying to push L&Q to get it done as soon as. Our Cladding is made up of mineral wool boards which are classified as Non-combustible so should be fairly simple to get the certificate done.

It's a shared ownership. Builder was Barratts. It took from August last year, when the problem first came to light because I couldn't get a mortgage with Halifax, until December for them to provide an acceptable certificate, so don't expect it to be quick! I had to switch to Santander because even though the certificate has been provided, Halifax have not yet changed their rules to accept the new certificate.

Swiftly wrote: »

Did you just leave it to your agent and solicitor to sort this all out with L&Q? I'm making slow progress with my sale and am wondering if I should be doing more hassling of L&Q myself.

In fact, my mortgage broker was the one who was hassling them for me. My agent and solicitor were frankly, entirely useless and didn't seem to lift a finger. If my broker hadn't been handling it, I would have chased Barratts directly.

rajmehta9

Hi , I live with my disabled mum in flat in a 6 storey London building, owned by Notting Hill Genesis.

We are trying to remortgage our flat through Barclays and have been advised by them a cladding report/ is required.

I got in touch with our property management officer at NHG and was advised that it might take anywhere between 6 months - 2 1/2 years to produce an EWS certificate.
We are extremely worried. Our discounted mortgage deal has expired and we are unable to remortgage with Barclays. We are trapped on our current rate and our payments have gone up by £800 p.c.m. This situation is untenable for us beyond a few months and a such I'm not sure who to complain to try and expedite this process.

Please see below reply from Property Management Officer at NHG in response to request for EWS. Grateful for any advice.

Hi

I’m sorry to say that there is a significant problem with providing the appropriate ‘certificate of compliance’. This is an issue currently affecting leaseholders throughout the UK as there are now very much stricter requirements over what needs to be inspected/tested before any building safety certificates are given. Please see below which is an overview of the current process within NHG to generate such certificates.

The current position is that our compliance team have given us an outline of the stages they would put each building through from intrusive assessment through to remedial works. The timescales on this should be seen as very broad estimates but this is what they have advised:

· Stage 1 – Instruct forensic architects to undertake intrusive survey. This stage will include appointing expert team including fire engineer. Will also include time to consult with original builder and appoint solicitors if necessary. Depending on finding may require mitigation works. Broad Timescale for this stage is 3-6 months.

If after Stage 1 works are required we will proceed with the other 2 stages:

· Stage 2 – Production of design specification and procurement. Allowance for time to conduct digital survey and commissioning of reports. Broad Timescale for this stage is 12 months.
· Stage 3 – On Site Works. Broad Timescale for this stage is 12 months.

Our compliance team are still working with our consultants on prioritising our buildings to go through stage 1. Not all of our buildings will be able to start in Stage 1 immediately due to capacity so we need to prioritise them. Broadly speaking though, if the building is identified as being high priority then we should be able to achieve compliance somewhere between 6 months (If no issues are found during the intrusive survey) and up to 2 and a half years if the building is found to require remedial work. It would be substantially longer if the building was low priority and was then found to require remedial works.

Regards,


Property Management Officer | Home Ownership [/I]

Anneth

This is absolutely shambolic, that is a huge increase per month! I am trying to purchase a flat with Notting hill Genesis and I have repeatedly asked them to provide a generic timescale of when the building will be certified. This has now been on going for 6 months. As of late they have taken to completely ignoring my emails. All I want is a generic timescale as my entire life is on hold waiting for this property. They could have sent me what they've sent you, I'm really in two minds and now just want to cancel the sale.

hi123

we have received a very similar message from Bellway homes GMV today
they had assured a response by last weekend but today said they are too busy to respond to individual requests
but do not have any update
they will inform everyone once the report is available but without any timescale

NorthWestVillager

Come into the same issue for our flat in Emerald Gardens, Wembley Park.

The building managers FirstPort have been reluctant to help. It took months of pressing to understand this issue (long after we've lost money on solicitors fees to the local council to try and buy them out of the shared equity scheme we're in).

The last response was:

There is not really any further news coming from Quintain at this point on the EWS1 form for Emerald Gardens. The update at the meeting last Friday was that the fire engineers who are trying to complete this are still working through all of the product specifications and as built information, but at this point are not able to complete the EWS1 form. They are not able to give me any definitive timescales at present, but it seems as though it will be another few weeks before we will know whether they are required to carry out simulated burns at a testing facility.

As previously mentioned, if this is the case then it will likely be the summer before they get the required reports to give a pass on the façade.


Has anyone in the region been able to buy/re-mortgage recently?

Silver_Queen

NorthWestVillager wrote: »

Come into the same issue for our flat in Emerald Gardens, Wembley Park.

The building managers FirstPort have been reluctant to help. It took months of pressing to understand this issue (long after we've lost money on solicitors fees to the local council to try and buy them out of the shared equity scheme we're in).

The last response was:

There is not really any further news coming from Quintain at this point on the EWS1 form for Emerald Gardens. The update at the meeting last Friday was that the fire engineers who are trying to complete this are still working through all of the product specifications and as built information, but at this point are not able to complete the EWS1 form. They are not able to give me any definitive timescales at present, but it seems as though it will be another few weeks before we will know whether they are required to carry out simulated burns at a testing facility.

As previously mentioned, if this is the case then it will likely be the summer before they get the required reports to give a pass on the façade.


Has anyone in the region been able to buy/re-mortgage recently?

I am buying in East London. The cladding was first raised as an issue in around August 2019 (or at least, this is what I've been told).

A report was provided in September but rejected because the surveyor had not actually been to the property to inspect it, although simulated burns were carried out off-site.

Another report was made in late November but then before it was approved, the RICs form was provided as well, and this has been accepted by Santander and I have received a mortgage offer from them. It took Santander 10 days from start to finish, but to be fair, all the documents were already in order from my last mortgage application.