{"id":14266,"date":"2026-04-14T17:22:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/14266\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:22:50","slug":"londons-cladding-nightmare-could-finally-be-solved-for-people-in-unsellable-and-unsafe-high-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/14266\/","title":{"rendered":"London’s cladding nightmare could finally be solved for people in unsellable and unsafe high-rises"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Building Safety Regulator, which regulates higher risk buildings across the UK, has announced a targeted package of measuresKumail Jaffer<\/a> Democracy Reporter covering the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority<\/p>\n

06:00, 14 Apr 2026<\/p>\n

\"Residential<\/p>\n

City Hall say the appointment of Lord Roe, former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB), will help unlock bottlenecks in both remediation on cladding sites and development across the country(Image: Mike Kemp\/In Pictures via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Londoners trapped in high-rise buildings with dangerous cladding<\/a> could see repairs speed up significantly under new reforms announced this month. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) – which regulates higher risk buildings across the UK – has announced a targeted package of measures aimed at streamlining both remediation projects and approvals for new residential buildings.<\/a><\/p>\n

The body, set up after the Grenfell tragedy in 2017 to overhaul building safety standards, has previously been criticised for long approval delays and a lack of practical guidance for developers.<\/a> The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said the “botched implementation” of the regulator<\/a> has been a “disaster…which has made delivering new homes more difficult, slow and uncertain.”<\/p>\n

Approval delays have hit the capital particularly hard due to London having 61 per cent of England\u2019s high-rise buildings and 96 per cent of all new builds being flats. “The BSR therefore made it harder and costlier to build flats over six storeys and deliver critical remediation works,” Sir Sadiq Khan<\/a> said last year.<\/p>\n

\"Grenfell<\/p>\n

Developers have been slow to remediate buildings since the Grenfell tragedy in 2017(Image: PA Wire\/PA Images)<\/p>\n

However, both ministers and City Hall say the appointment of Lord Roe, former commissioner of the London Fire Brigade<\/a> (LFB), will help unlock bottlenecks in both remediation and development across the country.<\/p>\n

The reforms announced this month include recruiting more case leads, allowing projects to start safely while ironing out any “distinct technical issues” further down the line and new guidance for the external remediation process.<\/p>\n

Officials hope that the move will ensure quicker dispute resolution between the BSR and developers and improve the standard of applications to prevent delays from a back-and-forth with developers over paperwork.<\/p>\n

\"Scaffolding<\/p>\n

Londoners have seen essential cladding works delayed in many cases(Image: PA Wire\/PA Images)<\/p>\n

The overall goal will be to reduce average decision times for remediation applications to less than 12 weeks, with an approval rating of over 65 per cent.<\/p>\n

Lord Roe, who chairs the BSR, said: “This plan represents a targeted and achievable package of measures to reset the system and clear older legacy remediation cases.<\/p>\n

“By doing so and then focussing on more recent applications, we can ensure high-rise residents see essential safety improvements they deserve without unnecessary or further delays.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lord<\/p>\n

Lord Roe was made head of the BSR last year – a move praised by the Mayor of London(Image: House of Lords)<\/p>\n

Officials admitted that internal resource pressures and a backlog of non-compliant applications have slowed down the progress of older, more complex cases, but have claimed a new specialist external remediation multidisciplinary team will go some way to clearing the blockage.<\/p>\n

Charlie Pugsley, the Acting CEO of BSR, added: \u201cCollectively these measures will ensure current and future remediation applications can proceed as smoothly and quickly as possible. By launching a dedicated multidisciplinary team and introducing account managers, we are dramatically increasing our capacity to make faster decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut speed cannot come at the cost of safety. We will also publish further specific guidance and support to help industry submit higher-quality applications, ensuring thousands of residents can feel safe, and are safe in their high-rise homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadiq Khan defends building on London Green Belt to fix housing crisis<\/p>\n

Londoners trapped in unsellable and unsafe high-rise properties will be hoping that the reforms will speed up their own experiences with cladding delays.<\/p>\n

Ministers have ordered landlords to either remediate or set a completion date for all residential buildings over 11m with unsafe cladding nationwide by 2029, or risk severe penalties.<\/p>\n

Last month the Mayor of London said it would be “some time” before significant progress is made in the capital. \u201cIn London alone, we have more than double the amount of dangerous buildings than the rest of the country put together,” he told a People’s Question Time event in Greenwich<\/a>. “This is a London problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

SIGN our petition<\/a> calling on UK Government to ban councils from making people homeless if they refuse long distance housing moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Building Safety Regulator, which regulates higher risk buildings across the UK, has announced a targeted package of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[1744,6586,154,27,1743,4327,473],"class_list":["post-14266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-greater-london-authority","tag-grenfell-tower-fire","tag-housing","tag-london","tag-london-assembly","tag-london-fire-brigade","tag-sadiq-khan"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116404224672959552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}