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Cladding work stalls - a matter of life or death?

Journalist: Tom Dunstan, FTAdviser

ended 17. December 2025

The most recent government data shows that the UK is monitoring more high-rise buildings with potential cladding risks than ever before, yet fewer are actually entering remediation. Property Inspect UK is now warning that the widening gap between identification and action reflects a persistent structural issue in how remediation is managed, verified, and delivered.

As of October 2025 (latest available data), a total of 5,570 residential buildings over 11 metres tall are being monitored through the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) building  safety remediation programme.

This represents a 15.2% annual increase, driven primarily by a sharp rise in the monitoring of buildings between 11-18 metres, which has increased by 23.5% year-on-year. The number of higher-rise buildings over 18 metres has increased by 9.5%.

Despite more buildings being monitored , momentum on remediation appears to be weakening. The total number of buildings actively progressing through remediation (underway on site) fell by -22.8% between October 2024 and October 2025.

But all may not be completely lost. One encouraging data point shows that the number of completed remediation projects rose by 35.5% over the same period, a signal that when work is finally commencing, it is being brought to completion at a faster rate.

What is your reaction to all this? How important is it to address the cladding crisis? What more should be done?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
This is typically shambolic of the Governments to bring something in without the infrastructure in place around it. The rush on the EWS1 assessments which exposed further flaws and issues put pressure on these blocks and the management all at once. The Leaseholders are also the ones who are being penalised as some blocks' insurance has gone through the roof along with costs for night-watch. There are many knock on effects but this should all have been dealt with by now and all should be well under way to be rectified if not complete already.
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
I have watched perfectly good buildings become financial black holes overnight, their values evaporating because bureaucrats cannot distinguish between genuine fire risks and paperwork paranoia. The 22%+ drop in active remediation while monitoring increases by 15% tells the story of a system designed to catalogue problems rather than actually solve them.

The human cost of this mess extends far beyond the headline figures. Leaseholders in buildings I know of, face insurance premiums that have increased from hundreds to thousands annually, while interim safety measures drain service charge reserves that should fund proper maintenance. Meanwhile, the buildings themselves deteriorate as management companies focus resources on compliance rather than upkeep.

The government created this crisis by rushing through regulations without considering implementation capacity for the sector.
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Benjamin Woodhouse
Co-owner at Balguard Engineering Ltd
Balguard is working with several main contractors on fire remediation projects throughout London and the home counties. The works are rarely straight forward and require exhaustive testing, analysis, and collaborative design amongst many trades before works can commence; Opening up the façade of the building often uncovers a wide variety of unforeseen additional considerations as the building are often several decades old, and every element needs to have be meticulously planned, engineered & fabricated which adds a huge amount of time, skilled resource at a time where there is both regional and national skills shortages which ultimately leads to additional cost to the projects.

This all takes capacity away from an already under pressure building industry that is underdelivering on targets for new homes and many of these projects require going through the overloaded planning system that has been hamstrung by the Building Safety Act.