A former bus driver who was paralysed in a cycling accident is trapped ‘like a prisoner’ in a first-floor flat he can’t sell because of the cladding crisis.
Anthony Kerrane has been hit with a £100,000 bill to fix the fire defects to his property in Cygnus Court, Croydon.
It has crushed his hopes of moving to a bungalow in Kent that would be more suitable to his needs following a life-changing crash in 2018.
Anthony says he has been living ‘like a recluse’ since the incident because his home has not been adapted for his wheelchair, making daily tasks like cleaning and washing difficult.
The 48-year-old relies on the lift in the building and claims he has not been outside in the past six weeks because it keeps on breaking.
Anthony endured further hardship following the sudden death of his long-term girlfriend last year, who had been caring for him.
He was hoping for a fresh start when he found the ‘perfect place for the rest of his life’ through a home ownership scheme for people with long-term disabilities (HOLD).Anthony, who is on Universal Credit, could only afford to buy it by selling back the 40% share of his current property to his housing association Optivo.
But his share of a £4,000,000 bill to bring the building in-line with post-Grenfell safety standards has rendered his flat worthless.
Anthony told Metro.co.uk: ‘Optivo are saying they will still buy me out at the price of [an extra] £100,000.
‘The mortgage is paid off but I was only expecting to make £82,000 on the sale, so I would still owe them money, I wouldn’t be able to get on the HOLD scheme. I would be left on the street.
‘I haven’t got a clue what will happen next… I feel like I will be stuck here forever.
‘These are flats for able bodied people which I was in 2007 when I moved in, then I had an accident which left me paralysed in a wheelchair stuck of the first floor.
‘The lift is temperamental, sometimes you can’t call it from the ground floor, you have to go up one. I haven’t been outside for ages now, I am paranoid to go out in case I get stuck.
‘Being stuck in one place all day drives you crazy.
‘I feel like I would be better off in prison, at least there I would have someone to talk to.’
Cygnus Court is under 18 metres, so it doesn’t qualify for the £5bn government grant scheme to make high-rises safe in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
Current legislation means innocent leaseholders are the only parties that can be forced to pay to fix the defects, in a growing scandal threatening to bankrupt people all over the country.
Residents at Cygnus Court say the mammoth bill has thrown retirement plans into turmoil with older leaseholders worried they won’t be able to stop working.
Metro.co.uk also spoke to a mum-of-one with a rare illness who fears her daughter, 12, could inherit the debt if she dies before the crisis is resolved.
Anthony, who is paraplegic, said he didn’t think he was a special case as ‘all his neighbours are stuck in the muck fighting this’.
But he said the battle for adequate housing had taken a toll on his mental health.
The former passionate cyclist said he is largely confined to his bedroom because he had his living room decorated just before the accident, and it is too difficult to sit in there. He desperately needs a wet room and and he can’t reach his kitchen cupboards.
‘There are days when I just break down into tears. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody,’ he said.
‘I was a bus driver for 15 years, my passion was cycling.
‘[In 2018] I went down the hill and two weeks later I woke up in the Royal London. The police don’t know what happened, all I know is I hit a wall.
‘When you’re living like this, it’s hard not to think about what happened that day.
‘My girlfriend was helping me out but then she died last year. I have become a recluse because of everything.‘Having the cladding business on top of it all is difficult.
‘Mentally, I don’t think how I used to. I have had bad thoughts.’
Optivo said Anthony’s case is a ‘a clear example of the difficult situations leaseholders find themselves in’ due to the building safety scandal, as they called on the government to make more funding available.
They admitted there had been issues with the lift due to a national shortage of parts and said they would ‘continue working with Mr Kerrane to try to agree a solution that is suitable for him’.
But Anthony hit out at the housing company for their lack of transparency over the situation.
The bill comes after he turned down a grant from Croydon Council to adapt his flat in 2019, deciding he would prefer to start a fresh in a new place on the ground floor because of issues with the lift.
Since then he has twice had to turn down a place on the HOLD scheme due to problems with cladding.
He paid £240 to get the property valued last year, only to find out soon afterwards the building was wrapped in flammable material and it could not be sold.
Optivo then told him he would have to move into temporary accommodation because the block was not safe for vulnerable people due to the fire risk.
After fighting to stay near his doctors, Optivo wrote to him in April agreeing to buy him out, with no mention of the huge cladding bill coming his way.
Anthony said: ‘Optivo are terrible. When you ask to be put through to someone, the person is either away from their desk, or they get 10 days to call you back and they never call you back. You just get passed from pillar to post.
‘I did everything they told me to. Optivo strongly urged me to start looking for somewhere, we got care for my mum [who has dementia] so my dad could come with me and we drove all over the country looking.
‘The new place would have been perfect, a home for the rest of my life.
‘After I rang Optivo to say the HOLD scheme were putting an offer in, it was like they’d never spoke to me. I never got a call back and then we got that [cladding] letter.
‘I asked if I have to pay it and was told everyone has to.
‘I am on Universal Credit. I have no intention of paying them anything.’
A letter sent to leaseholders in September said Cygnus Court needed £3.9m of works including the replacement of flammable cladding as well as the removal of timber balconies, decking and roof terrace, a replacement roof and a new external wall system.
Optivo said the problems were identified following an inspection of the external walls which was carried out in line with government guidance, and it has a responsibility to keep residents safe.
But the company, which is non-for-profit, has angered leaseholders by refusing to share the results of the survey, saying they can’t for legal reasons.
Flat owners have questioned whether all the work is necessary after ministers changed building safety advice in July to say there is no substantial risk of fire in blocks under 18m.
The shift in position came in a bid to persuade banks to stop asking for new fire safety checks on mid to low rise buildings – but it has done little to free the hundreds of thousands of mortgage prisoners the cladding crisis had created.
The cladding crisis at a glance
Britain’s cladding crisis is an on-going scandal that followed the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, when 72 people died.
The tragedy exposed decades of failings in building safety standards and a need to make them safe.
Attention was initially focused only on high-rise blocks with the same type of external cladding as Grenfell tower – but safety fears have since spread to all corners of the flat market.
Problems were accelerated by government advice last year that said residential buildings of any height should be assessed for fire risk -despite funding only being available to remove cladding on those over 18m.
It led to banks demanding new External Wall Survey (EWS1) inspections before offering mortgages on flats – trapping thousands of people who can no longer sell while they wait for the forms and the work to be complete.
Surveys have revealed a raft of widespread safety issues beyond cladding, often in mid to low rise buildings.
But the government has repeatedly refused to extend the funding pot – leading to leaseholders all over the country facing eye-watering bills as the costs are passed back onto them.
While the remediation work gets underway, Cygnus Court residents have been warned they may have to pay for temporary safety measures ‘at a maximum share of £3,175 each’.
All together, it means they each face a bill of £100,000, despite owning just a fraction of their flats under the government’s shared ownership scheme for affordable housing.
‘When we got the letter it floored us, a lot of people burst into tears,’ said Helen Shaw, a mum-of-one who owns 70% of her flat in the building.
‘It came on a Saturday so nobody could call. It felt very cleverly timed.’
My personal fear is leaving my
child with a huge debt that I did not create by any wrongdoing of my own
Helen, 51, suffers with a rare illness known as Antitrypsin Deficiency, which means her body lacks the protein needed to protect her lungs from daily things such as smoke, toxins and infections.
After a difficult 18 months of shielding during the pandemic, she hoped to buy a dog and move to a house in the countryside with her 12-year-old daughter, as pollution can affect her health.
But because of the cladding bill she ‘can’t even afford a shed’.
Her vulnerable health has also forced her to think about worst case scenario – such as what will happen to the debt she owes if she dies before a solution is found.
Optivo have said they will contact residents individually over payment plans, suggesting a flexible 10-year loan could be one option.
That would mean paying nearly £800 a month until 2031 on top of rent, mortgage, service charges and bills.
Helen, who is too ill to work and living on Universal Credit, said there is ‘no way’ she can afford that.
‘When they start charging us, I really don’t know what I will do,’ she said.
‘We can’t move,we can’t sell. There are people here who think they will be better off declaring bankruptcy.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing buying this flat, I thought [if something happens] my daughter is going to be safe, she’ll hurt but she’ll get on.
‘This has ruined everything. God willing I have plenty of years left, but when you are ill and there is no cure, these things are on your mind.
‘My personal fear is leaving my child with a huge debt that I did not create by any wrongdoing of my own. Its truly unfair.’ The financial pressure of the safety scandal has been blamed as a ‘significant factor’ in the suicide of one young man last month. Leaseholders have questioned how many more lives ‘must be lost’ before the government intervenes.Earlier this week, Boris Johnson stocked outrage when he denied homes with cladding are unsafe and dodged a request to meet a victim suffering with anxiety.
And there was no mention of any extra funding at Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Autumn Budget.
Ministers have previously proposed a £50-a-month loan scheme for buildings under 18m, but details have still not been set out months after the announcement.
Cladding campaigners say the plan is a ‘betrayal’ because they should not be forced to take out loans which will be longer than their mortgage terms for a problem they didn’t create.
For residents of Cygnus Court,
£50-a-month instalments would take 166 years to pay off.Wendy Salole, an insurance worker, said she has no idea how she can retire in 10 years if she is forced to cough up the funds.
The 56-year-old is already feeling the crunch of the rising cost of living with her rent, bills, council tax and service charges going up.
The £100,000 cladding bill is twice as much as the £49,000 she borrowed for her mortgage 14 years ago, when she bought a 30% share of her flat.
Wendy said: ‘I thought I only had another 10 years to go to pay my mortgage off, then they land this on your plate.
‘My mortgage was £50,000, over 25 years and now they want double that in 10 years, I don’t know how I am going to pay that.
‘The government say save your pension, save for this and that, but it’s going to be impossible for us now to have a life when we are older. We would be surviving, not living.
‘I took out a 30% share of my flat because its all I could afford. I did that on the basis of affordable housing. Now its become unaffordable. ‘It’s a very frustrating and worrying time.’
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing said the new Secretary of State Micheal Gove, is looking at new ways ‘to protect and support leaseholders’ and ‘will not hesitate to take further action if necessary’.
They said it was ‘unacceptable and unfair that leaseholders are facing bills of this kind, through no fault of their own’, adding: ‘Building owners and industry ‘must make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders’.
But Optivo suggested their hands are tied without more funding from the government.
The company, which is non-for-profit, said it had set aside ‘significant’ funds to spend on fire safety works over the the next fire years, and that it will be covering the entire cost for rented residents.
It said it had carried out ‘proportionate and risk based assesemnts’ of 4,000 buildings and that 7% require remediation works.
It pointed out that Cygnus Court is too small to qualify for government funding and called on ministers to provide further clarity on the loan scheme.
The statement said: ‘We’re empathetic to the difficult situation which is affecting leaseholders across the country, including at Cygnus Court. We therefore understand the importance of strong communication and being as open and transparent as we can be.
‘We understand why it might be frustrating for our leaseholders not being able to see every document. However, one of the reasons we’re unable to share certain, sensitive, documents at this stage is they could form part of a legal case for recovering costs from others.’
The company added: ‘Unlike private developers, we’re a not-for-profit organisation and we reinvest our income back into providing services for our 90,000+ residents.’
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