New buildings with dangerous cladding are still being found across the city region three years after the Grenfell disaster.
At least 50 buildings in the Liverpool City Region are believed to have applied to the government’s £1 billion Building Safety Fund for help with fire safety problems, but the true number of affected buildings remains unknown.
Julie Fraser, of the campaign group Liverpool Cladiators, told a meeting of affected residents on Wednesday: “We do have a small spreadsheet together, but the problem is there’s no big data sheet.
“Week by week we are getting buildings that weren’t aware of any problems coming forward.”
Ms Fraser’s own apartment block, in Runcorn, has known about its cladding issues for a year and has already had some work done on other fire safety problems at great cost to residents.
But other buildings in the city region are only just finding out that they are affected as well, leaving residents facing huge bills for waking watches or new fire alarms while the value of their flats plummets to zero.
Cllr Barry Kushner, Liverpool City Council’s cabinet member for housing and regeneration, said: “We don’t know exactly the extent of it because buildings need to be surveyed by the fire service.”
Even local councillors have not been told about all the buildings that have applied for the Building Safety Fund, designed to help pay for the removal of dangerous cladding.
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Cllr Nick Small, who represents Central ward on Liverpool City Council, said he knew of around 14 buildings in the city, mainly in the city centre and along the waterfront, while some residents were not aware of problems until they received a bill.
Cllr Small told Wednesday’s meeting: “The first building we got involved with a couple of months ago was because they got a bill for a waking watch.
“They had a demand for over £1,000 for a fire alarm in each apartment and people are going absolutely mad.”
Liverpool Council resolved to provide support for leaseholders caught up in the cladding scandal at the end of September after a motion backed by Cllr Small and other city councillors, but they still need to find out which buildings are affected.
During the meeting, one resident said they were struggling to get their money back after paying for a waking watch that turned out to be unnecessary and was cancelled after a matter of weeks.
Another resident said the company managing their apartment block had refused to share the fire service’s report detailing exactly what problems had been identified in the building.
The meeting also heard from Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne, who sits on the housing select committee in Parliament and offered his support to the group.
My Byrne said: “I really do see the momentum behind this campaign and because it’s right, because it’s just I think it will get results quickly, I really do.
“There’s cross-party consensus on this so I’m quite confident moving forward that it will get resolved.”
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