Housing Secretary Michael Gove has held fresh talks with lenders to thrash out how to fix the cladding safety crisis.
Sky News reports that lenders including Barclays, Nationwide and Lloyds Banking Group discussed ways to help thousands of homeowners and landlords to sell their properties, offering them some potential Christmas cheer.
As we reported exclusively in March, some 750,000 landlords are believed to be caught in the crisis.
It adds that a Whitehall source said Mr Gove was “in listening mode”, while one bank insider described the meeting as “constructive”.
It was reported earlier this month that the government was exploring ways to penalise companies implicated by the public inquiry into the Grenfell disaster.
Suggestions were said to include barring those developers responsible for dangerous cladding from public contracts and for an extra £1bn to be released for medium-rise buildings.
The Financial Times also recently reported that the Bank of England’s prudential regulatory arm was asking banks to audit their exposure to homes that might be unsellable.
Earlier this year, the major high street banks agreed to modify their mortgage-lending assessments of some tall buildings in order to unblock thousands of prospective property transactions.
Risk aversion
A DLUHC spokesman said Michael Gove had met with a number of lenders to discuss building safety and explore potential solutions which would drive out excessive risk aversion from the market.
He added: “Leaseholders are innocent parties in this. As the secretary of state has made clear, we are committed to ensuring they are supported and protected and we will be setting out further proposals in due course.”
Read the Sky report in full.
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