Nearly half of England's buildings under the developer remediation contract have not started fire-safety repairs

The figures come from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's monthly remediation release, published Oct. 28 and reported by Construction News. They cover residential buildings 11 meters (36 feet) and taller that developers agreed to repair, or pay to repair, under the developer remediation contract. The developers' own returns run only to July 31, so the started and finished counts are the same as in the August release.

Of those 2,682 buildings, 1,416 (53%) have started or finished works, and 613 (23%) are complete, including 110 still waiting for building control sign-off. Another 409 have plans in place but no work on site. Developers put the cost of the repairs at about £4.2 billion. The contract calls for repairs once practical but sets no completion date, Construction News noted.

Newer government-funded schemes lag older ones. In the Cladding Safety Scheme, open to buildings from 11 meters up, 151 of 1,524 eligible buildings (10%) are finished and 452 have started or finished. The Building Safety Fund reports 495 of 639 high-rise buildings complete, and the ACM program for Grenfell-type cladding has 481 of 516 done.

Across all five programs the ministry tracks 4,732 buildings with unsafe cladding, and 2,111 of them have not started work. It estimates 101,000 homes are in those buildings. The next release is due Nov. 25.