Greenwich homeowners cannot sell as cladding fire experts disagree

Dr Lisa Smith has been wanting to sell her apartment for two years

Some residents of a south London apartment block say they have not been able to sell their homes for three years because fire safety experts cannot agree if their cladding is safe.

The confusion has delayed necessary works being carried out on the building.

Union Park in Greenwich is lined with thick wooden panels on the outside.

The management company and both surveyors have been approached for comment.

Dr Lisa Smith, 42, and her family moved in in 2013 and have never had concerns about the building's fire safety.

She said the building received a fire safety risk assessment from MAF Associates in January 2020, which stated remedial work was needed on the structure's lower balconies.

Dr Smith told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "Our managing agent had some kind of an issue with the result of that first fire assessment report.

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"It's still unclear as to why that was but our management agency decided to discount that first assessment and appoint a new fire assessing company to carry out further assessment."

Leaseholders living in homes more than 11m up are eligible for the government's Building Safety Fund, set up following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

But some parts of Union Park are under 11m, making them ineligible.

The residents were initially quoted £7,000 for the work but the quote became hundreds of thousands of pounds when a second assessment by Trifire concluded all the cladding needed to come off.

She added: "If you were to look at the two reports, they're like chalk and cheese. It's just a complete mess.

"This is a scandal in itself, that there's just such variability in the conclusions that the various different fire assessors are coming to."

The block has thick wooden panelling causing concern

Wanting to sell up and move away, Dr Smith has been left renting out the flat subject to fluctuating mortgage rates.

She said: "I think that people stand to make a lot of money out of work being done to buildings, that's my feeling. Especially in buildings that are under 11m where there is no immediate risk."

Fellow resident Fran Dean, 59, also bought her flat in Union Park in 2013. Ms Dean said she had never been concerned about the wooden cladding on her building and the halt in the building work was stopping her from selling and retiring.

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A spokesperson for End Our Cladding Scandal, a campaign aimed at resolving building safety issues in the UK, said: "For buildings under 11m, we are concerned that there are still too many cases where companies appear to be over-specifying remediation work.

"There is absolutely no disincentive to them doing so, because in buildings of this height it is the innocent leaseholders who have been left to pay enormous uncapped charges for remediation, with no support from the government, developers or building owners."

Management company LRM, and surveyors MAF Associates and Trifire, were approached for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.

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