'Welcome to hell': Dangerous cladding has left families homeless or stuck seven years after Grenfell

ITV News' Social Affairs Correspondent Sarah Corker speaks with families affected by living in homes with flammable cladding.

Thousands of people have been left homeless or stuck in unsafe buildings, with some facing financial ruin, after serious cladding defects on buildings across the country were exposed following the Grenfell Tower tragedy seven years ago.

Official figures reveal more than a third of high rise buildings in Greater Manchester have been identified as having serious fire safety faults since 2017. Of those, ITV News has learnt, nearly 200 buildings are so dangerous, special emergency measures, such as round the clock fire patrols are in place indefinitely to keep residents safe.

Local leaders have blamed delays in government funding and developers refusing to pay for the slow progress. This is a scenario being repeated in towns and cities across the UK.

Families in these defective buildings have told ITV News they are living in misery with devastating consequences to their mental and physical health.

The social housing tenants left freezing every winter

Eddie Farrell's tower block in Salford was stripped of its flammable cladding shortly after Grenfell but more than four years later it has not been replaced and his home has been left with no insulation.

Every winter hundreds of social housing tenants are left freezing.

Malus Court is one of eight blocks of flats, which are owned by Salford council but managed by Pendleton Together, and have been plagued with problems for years.

"Welcome to Hell. It’s like a building site, dark, damp, miserable, cold. We just feel abandoned", Mr Farrell said.

The building is surrounded by scaffolding and on almost every floor of Malus Court’s seven storeys, wiring, lights and even smoke alarms were hanging down precariously from the ceiling.

“I don’t feel safe, this exposed wiring has been like this for a year” Mr Farrell said as he points to the ceiling. "It’s like living in a slum."

The situation has taken a toll on the 62-year-old’s health.

"I’ve had three heart attacks since I have been in this block," Mr Farrell said. "It’s stress. Sometimes it can get so cold here you can see you breath in the living room.”

Then there’s the financial strain. For four years tenants have been paying increased heating costs because there’s no external cladding to retain the heat.

Mr Farrell said: "It costs me £340 a month to heat this place. I can’t afford that, I’ve had to borrow money off my son. Most of the time I keep the heating off."

"Seven years since Grenfell, nothing has changed. We feel like we’ve just been dumped."

The housing association has apologised for delays to the work here and told us safety across the eight blocks is assessed on a daily basis.

Tenants have been given £50 pounds a month during the winter to help pay for heating.

Michelle Allott, Executive Director for Operations at Together Housing Group said: “While I fully accept that for many of our residents this taking too long, we are working to ensure we get this right for their long term safety and the work is unavoidable."

Ordered to evacuate and left homeless

Fozia Malik is locked out of her own home, indefinitely.

“It’s heart breaking. You see your home and you can’t step foot inside. I am still having to pay even though I can’t live here,” Ms Malik told ITV News.

The fire safety faults at her building in Oldham are so serious, Fozia and her neighbours were told they had to leave immediately as the fire service evacuated the whole block in 2020.

As a leaseholder Ms Malik is still receiving bills for the annual service charge and management fees to the tune of £4000 a year, even though she hasn’t lived there for four years.

"I’m still being billed for window cleaning, security, CCTV, and no nothing is happening here. The only residents. are the pigeons," she said.

Ms Malik is among the estimated 16,000 residents in high and mid-rise blocks that have been forced to leave homes due to a fire or fire safety defects since 2017.

New analysis for ITV news by campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal shows that in the last three months alone, 600 people have had to leave their homes.

Ms Malik has been left effectively homeless and she now lives in a student hostel with no carpet, a bucket to wash laundry and a bathroom shared with 20 other people.

“For me it’s like I am living in a cave, without light, without any hope. Every day I cry,” she said.

The 47-year-old works two jobs, seven days a week to pay the bills for the Oldham flat and the rent for her hostel room.

“We are all suffering mentally, physically and financially. Who is going to be responsible? At one point I wanted to take my own life. It’s my home and no-one has the right to take my roof from me,” she said.

Residential Management Group (RMG) which manages the building described it as a ‘very complex case,’ blaming the delays on new legislation designed to protect leaseholders from the costs of remediation work.

“…The Building Safety Act has since been introduced which has made the funding of these works more complex and has impacted progress but we have been working through this with the landlord,” RMG said in a statement.

"We are held back by long delays in government funding," says Greater Manchester Deputy Mayor Kate Green.

Greater Manchester Deputy Mayor Kate Green, who is part of the area’s High Rise Taskforce set up in the wake of Grenfell, blamed both the government and developers for the delays in making buildings safe.

“We are ultimately held back by long delays in the government’s funding regimes, and a further problem is the capacity of the construction industry to come and carry out this work.

"Some of the funding costs will be passed to developers, which is right, but where developers continue to drag their feet, people continue to be in these terrible living circumstances,” she told ITV News.

The government is talking tough, warning building owners to fix this crisis or we’ll take enforcement action against you.

Rushanara Ali MP, Minister for Building Safety, admitted the "progress on remediation has been far too slow.”

“The full force of government will be used to make building owners fix this crisis so that people have safe and secure homes, with further measures to be set out this autumn.”

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