Reserve funds raided to pay for replacement cladding are predicted to cause a surge in dilapidated homes. While management firms’ emergency funds are drained to pay for the removal of dangerous cladding, desperate leaseholders will be forced to inhabit dilapidated buildings with rising service charges and falling property values. A building safety crisis across the UK has emerged, four years on from the catastrophe of the Grenfell Tower fire. Experts have warned that the cost of making homes safe will set off a new, years-long disaster of missed repairs: the ‘long Covid of the cladding scandal’ ‘Building reserve funds’, pots built up from service charges to cover basic maintenance costs, have been looted by management companies. The money has been used to pay for temporary fire-safety measures, such as ‘waking watches’; personnel employed to walk round a building at night. Mary-Anne Bowring of Ringley, which manages more than 12,000 properties, said freeholders have abandoned all other repairs to carry out the fire safety works. There are apartment blocks where 100% of the reserve funds have been spent on replacing cladding. Experts have warned that leaseholders will be in for a shock when all the work is complete. They will receive a £120,000 bill for lift replacements, for instance, but there will be nothing in the kitty to pay for them. This will be the long Covid of the building safety crisis. According to ARMA, the average block has only £84,000 left in reserves, which is worrying when it is considered that a new roof could cost several hundred thousand.

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