More than seven years after the Grenfell tragedy, residents and leaseholders of flats are still paying the price for a decades-long collective failure of the state and the construction industry. Our campaign believes that everyone deserves a safe home in which to live, work, care for their families and make plans for their future – but across the country, an estimated 600,000 people still go to bed tonight in homes that are unsafe, and almost 3 million are trapped with homes they cannot sell or remortgage, unable to move on with their lives. 

The pace of making homes safe remains shockingly slow – and at the current rate, could take decades. The government rarely acknowledges the full scale of buildings affected, but data published by Ministry for Housing Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) in July 2024 estimates that circa 11,000 buildings are likely to be impacted. The latest statistics show that, even now, only 4,613 buildings are being actively monitored. To date, cladding remediation works have only been completed in 1,332 unsafe buildings – which is only 12% of the estimated 11,000 buildings that are expected to require remediation. 

The Sunday Times recently documented how more than 15,000 residents have been ordered to leave their unsafe homes since Grenfell and evacuations are on the rise: last year residents were ordered to leave at least 21 buildings. Residents decanted due to fire safety include leaseholders, but also private tenants and social tenants. Many of these people still live in temporary accommodation years after the decant. 

Across the country, an estimated 600,000 people still go to bed tonight in homes that are unsafe, and almost 3 million are trapped with homes they cannot sell or remortgage, unable to move on with their lives. 

After seven years, many people desperately need to move home – because they can no longer afford to live there, need to relocate for work, move in with a partner, move out because their relationship has ended, downsize because they are retiring or upsize to allow their families to grow – but homes are frequently unsellable until remediation is complete. 

Meanwhile, exorbitant building insurance bills are draining their finances with every day that passes. As time goes by, more and more leaseholders and shared owners find that they can no longer cope with the costs they face and some are forced into distressed sales or bankruptcy, losing their home through no fault of their own.