London The British government on Wednesday announced an extra £ 3.5bn ($ 4.8bn) aid to help millions of homeowners whose properties have been made unsaleable by discovering that common materials used to make weather-resistant buildings across Britain extremely to make flammable.
Apartment buildings across the country are covered with cladding material that is unsafe after the devastating 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in central London. The fire claimed 72 lives and showed how quickly cladding could spread flames around a building.
Since no bank can give them a mortgage loan, owners of apartments with a dangerous upholstery can also include increasing costs associated with the measures put in place to address the fire hazard, including the payment of guards to patrol buildings. .
The government initially announced £ 1.5 billion last year for the removal of the unsafe upholstery. But for some homeowners, the measures came too late.
Hayley Tillotson, 28, has made her dream of home ownership come true by saving the £ 10,000 deposit for her Leeds apartment. She was recently forced to declare bankruptcy after unsafe upholstery and other fire safety issues were found in her building.
“It did not occur to me for one second that they could sell me something that was a death knell and was completely unfit,” Tillotson said. “Look ahead now, the rest of my future is ruined. It’s gone. And there are thousands and thousands of people like me.”
The American connection
The announcement of additional funding comes amid an ongoing investigation by the British government into the cause of the Grenfell Tower fire, which has revealed how some of the companies manufacturing the materials used in the upholstery at Grenfell , continued to market their products as safe, despite the fact that some employees know they were flammable.
Among the companies is the American firm Arconic, which manufactured the upholstery on Grenfell Tower through a French subsidiary.
From emails shared with the investigation, it appears that some Arconic employees were aware of the danger of fire posed by the type of cladding on the Grenfell tower, but that the company was still selling it.
In a statement, the company in Pittsburgh said they “continue to offer their full support to the authorities as the investigation works through the complex questions. It is not appropriate that we comment further while the investigation is ongoing” and for all evidence was presented in phase two. ‘
“These companies are still working as if nothing happened,” Karim Mussilhy, whose uncle died in the Grenfell Tower fire, told CBS News. “People need to be safe in their homes. People should not feel like they are going to sleep and not know if they are going to wake up or not.”
BBC News’s Vinnie O’Dowd contributed to this report.