You may have that opinion but as someone involved as a tenant in trying to resolve our cladding issues, having met with many and varied tenants, leaseholders and owners, I could not agree.
It clearly is nothing to do with poverty/class/race. Everyone affected is equally traumatised. To reduce it to that minimises the traumatising effect this has had for all people living in this type of cladded building. The culpability lies with those who passed this cladding for use on all manner of unsuitable buildings. It isn't even the builders fault, they are told what to install. It isn't the architects fault, they look at all the approved cladding options and chose one. It is solely the responsibility of those that approved it as appropriate for high rise buildings.
There are apartments on Salford Quays which sell for half a million that are covered in this material. So people living in them were as much at risk. Poverty didn't come into it, and similarly class was not an issue. I believe that there are similar blocks in London. Where things differ, is that the owners of these apartments have greater chance of a quick response to cladding replacement. Although those people stretched on a mortgage are finding things particularly hard since a judge said it is the leaseholders responsibility to replace cladding, not the building owners.
The social housing blocks in Salford have majority white residents, so race didn't have a bearing on cladding choice here. We were involved in the choice, and were assured of its safety. Salford still has the greatest number of affected blocks.
I was involved in the tenant consultation for the cladding instalation on our block. The primary function for cladding our (and all social housing blocks) was to improve insulation to EU standards. Our block is 24 storey originally clad in brick. It was far from an eyesore. The original intention was to IMPROVE life for the residents. They did not spend millions cladding buildings just for aesthetic reasons. Although it was nice to have a great looking home to come back to.
The works were carried out to existing regulations, that is where things went wrong. The sole responsibility is those that passed this type of cladding as suitable.
No one, and I mean no one, would have agreed to that cladding if they had known how dangerous it was, no matter who the intended residents were. It is down to those people that test and agree standards, and them alone.
JM is jumping on a bandwagon, saying she knows the reason for the failure because of her experience in the fire service. Experience limited to call handling.
I know more about it because it has directly affected me every day of the past three years, and probably for at least a year to come. And being shielding for the past few months had exacerbated those feelings. Trying to make it a race issue is dangerous, as those of us up north living in dangerously clad buildings feel marginalised and this will increase race tensions.
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