By Bill Heaney
The SNP must pledge not to raid any more funding from the high rise buildings cladding programme, Scottish Labour has said.
This year the SNP “reprofiled” £700,000 of cladding remediation funding as part of its efforts to plug the gaps in its budget.
The SNP has faced criticism for slow progress removing the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding from Scottish buildings.
In 2020 the Scottish Government received £97 million of Barnett consequentials for cladding remediation – however, so far just £9 million of that has been spent on cladding remediation, with the Scottish Government recently admitting that the rest of the money has been spent elsewhere.
The UK Labour government has pledged to speed up the process of removing dangerous cladding from English buildings following the publication of the damning Grenfell Inquiry report, which set out a series of serious failures.
Scottish Labour has said that the Scottish Government must start treating this with the urgency it deserves.
Scottish Labour Housing spokesperson Mark Griffin, pictured right, said “It is a scandal that after all these years so many buildings in Scotland are still covered in this dangerous cladding.
“The Grenfell tragedy should have been an immediate call to action, but progress has been painfully slow in Scotland.
“The SNP has already robbed thousands of pounds from this vital programme to plug the blackhole in its budget – this cannot happen again.
“Building safety cannot be sacrificed to SNP incompetence and financial mismanagement.
“The SNP must start to act with the urgency needed and give a cast iron commitment that no more cladding funding will be raided to fix its own mistakes.”
This article is pure politicking.
The cost of replacing the defective cladding on buildings is immense. Hundreds if not billions across the United Kingdom.
Folks truly do not know the extent of the cladding issue. It even exists in council housing in our very own area where insulation works being carried out under the Scottish Quality Housing programme had to be suspended after it was realised that the cladding installed did not comply with fire safety.
Rather however than ripping out all the new works at huge cost the council sought a derogation to allow the cladding to remain in place, which derogation was after many months granted. Safety standards, and this was immediately post Grenfell were inadequate and then rather than spending millions ripping out new work, were found to be alright to remain.
And that it seems is the question that no one asks, no one cares about until like Grenfell some 72 poor souls get burned alive. Safety standards, or is is it, industry vested interest standards, were all fine until Grenfell, and then, shock horror they were not.
So who is to pay for ripping out and replacing all this cladding? And let us not be mistaken believing that it is only the poor people in social housing who are living in buildings with unsafe cladding. Private housing extensively has unsafe cladding, with folks living in houses , new houses that they cannot sell, cannot get insured. It’s a huge problem and to suggest or imply that the SNP are to blame in not providing the money, or as this article suggests are raiding the money, is just totally and utterly off beam.
Unsafe cladding is a result of liberalisation, and cutting red tape as it was posited. We all loved cutting red tape. We all loved the market and industry doing what it does best which is looking after our welfare and safety at good prices. – not!
This was the concept rolled out by Thatcher and accelerated by the subsequent Labour government. And the market has indeed delivered in spades – quality houses, quality schools, quality colleges, quality hospitals. And by jingo with PFI too, some of our assets are costing a pretty penny and then some. But maybe its all the SNP’s fault?
Or am I missing something?
By publishing something, we do not at The Democrat necessarily agree with it. We leave it to the readers to take that on board and decide for them. We operate a grown up democracy. Unfortunately, the majority of our local politicians and public officials do not. It’s time for them to life the restrictions (bans) on The Democrat. No better time than now when the administration is changing at West Dunbartonshire Council. But what are we ever going to do about our Labour MP? Is he going to carry on treating the press and the public who read their material like scat. Which is what his beaten SNP predecessor did? There won’t be much comment from Westminster in the coming FIVE years if it’s down to Douglas McAllister to make that decision. Billie (above) is, of course, correct. That Grenfell stuff is pure politicking. Some people say you shoulod never believe what they read in the newspapers. I sometimes don’t believe what I write in them. Who was it said when interviewing a prominent politician: “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”