"It feels like being trapped"
Almost nine years on from the Grenfell tragedy, leaseholders across London are still in limbo
Almost nine years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, some London residents say they are still living with uncertainty, unanswered questions and fears about whether their homes are truly safe.
Many leaseholders have been left in limbo after years of delays in buildings being signed off as fire safe. Alongside ongoing uncertainty over whether leaseholders or residents will bear the financial cost of remediation works.
And the battle has taken its toll on the 36- year-old Merton leaseholder, Ashley Jenkin, who discovered in late 2019 that his ninth-floor flat was potentially covered in unsafe cladding.
Ashley's situation was further complicated after he fell victim to a dodgy fire risk assessor who falsely signed off fire safety certificates. The assessor was later expelled from the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) and their membership revoked.
Ashley said not only was it a "disgrace" but that he should be in jail.
Hear from impacted leaseholder, Ashley:
Ashley is one of many leaseholders still facing long delays, uncertainty, mental strain and stress and ongoing concerns about building fire safety years after Grenfell.
End Our Cladding Scandal Campaigner, Giles Grover said: "People should be able to know their buildings are safe. We've got thousands of buildings [that have] cladding and non-cladding issues."
The campaigner said the building safety crisis has left residents and leaseholders feeling unsafe, unheard and still facing an uncertain future.
Many people are stuck in limbo where they're unable to make big life decisions such as having a family, moving, selling and downsizing. Their homes- described by the campaigner as a "sanctuary, where you are mentally safest and most secure," are in reality, "a fire trap [where] you're at risk of burning to the ground within 10-15 minutes."
Hear from the campaigner Giles below:
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
Credit: Ikraan Mohamed
Credit: Ikraan Mohamed
Credit: Ikraan Mohamed
Credit: Ikraan Mohamed
On Wednesday, June 14, 2017, a fire tore through the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block in North Kensington, West London, killing 72 people.
It was one of the deadliest residential fires in modern UK history, causing lasting trauma to the survivors, bereaved families, friends and the wider Grenfell community.
The fire was caused by an electrical fault in a fridge-freezer in a fourth floor flat but the rapid spread of the blaze was linked to the buildings flammable cladding. This caused the fire to spread up 19 storeys in less than 20 minutes.
Almost nine years later, building fire safety concerns - particularly surrounding cladding - persist across England, with hundreds of thousands of residents and leaseholders trapped in unsafe buildings, unable to sell their homes or facing costly remediation works.
As of February 2026, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data shows 4,310 residential buildings in England of 11 metres and above are being monitored within government cladding remediation programmes due to identified or suspected unsafe cladding.
Of these, 2,298 buildings (53%) have either started or completed remediation works which means 2012 buildings (47%) have not yet had remediation started at all.
However, these figures relate only to identified and monitored buildings which do not reveal the full scale of the problem. It also does not account for unsafe buildings under 11 metres.
In 2024, the National Audit Office (NAO) estimated up to 7,200 buildings over 11 metres remain unidentified.
The Public Accounts Committee has since urged the government to put residents at the heart of remission efforts, warning that thousands of potentially unsafe buildings may still not have been identified.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Committee, said: "But eight years after Grenfell, it is still not known how many buildings out there have dangerous cladding, and when it will be removed. That vow remains unkept for every day that is still the case."
In response, a Government spokesperson said: "This Government has been taking tough and decisive action after years of dither and delay, going further than ever before to speed up the unacceptably slow pace of remediation and provide an end in sight for residents who have suffered for too long.
"We continue to work closely with industry, local authorities and residents to accelerate remediation efforts while ensuring those responsible for unsafe buildings cover the costs, with new penalties and criminal sanctions on building owners that refuse to take action."
Yet for many residents, the delay continues to take its toll.
Another leaseholder, Kerry Pace, - whose property is located in South London - described how the crisis has taken over her daily life and put everything on hold.
After the Grenfell disaster, External Wall System (EWS1) forms were introduced by industry bodies to help lenders reassess the fire safety risks in external wall systems, particularly in multi-story residential buildings. While not a legal requirement, they were widely required by mortgage lenders for many leaseholders seeking to sell or remortgage.
Kerry's ESW1 report identified cladding on the top floor of the building and balconies resulting in a B2 rating meaning remedial work is required before it can be sold or remortgaged. Although her flat is on the ground floor, she has been unable to sell it due to the B2 rating.
"To begin with, every minute of my day was consumed with it," she said. "I literally woke up in the morning and there's this cladding thought."
She explained the financial burden and pressure the situation has created over the years, with her insurance doubling within five years.
She adds: "How are we going to managed to to find the money, this unknown sum, how are we going to manage now that we've bought this flat with this mortgage which has now doubled."
She expressed the situation had also forced her family into difficult decisions. "The fact that my husband has cashed in his personal pension, that's a terrible thing really."
Leaseholders have already spent significant sums from their reserve fund, with no remediation funding yet secured.
"We’re waiting in terrible fear for the cost of remediation works," Kerry said.
"And also there's the thing about when we do come to sell the flat, how are we going to sell it?"
She added simply: "It feels like being trapped."
Kerry said she faces obstacles everywhere she turns in her attempts to resolve the safety issue and sell her home, describing the remediation funding system as "very murky and not clear."
"We’re waiting in terrible fear for the cost of remediation works."
Hear from impacted leaseholder, Kerry Pace.
Credit: Kerry Pace
Credit: Kerry Pace
A chartered surveyor and fire safety expert, Arnold Tarling, who has spent years raising the alarm about unsafe cladding and other fire safety failures said many of the risks had been known long before Grenfell.
He said he raised concerns following the 2009 Lakanal house fire which killed six people and injured at least 20 after a fire spread rapidly through the exterior of the building but they fell on deaf ears.
Arnold shared he felt there was little willingness to act on the concerns being raised. "From one end to the other, there was no appetite to sort out the defective building and there still doesn't seem to be an appetite to sort it out now."
He also expressed his trepidation for the residents that are still living in buildings requiring 24-hour waking watches because of ongoing fire safety problems.
“It’s unbelievable that they are unsafe after 10 years, there seems to be a lack of effort on behalf of the building owners and also on the contractors who built the buildings defectively in the first place," said Arnold.
He emphasised that the problem is not with the building fire safety regulation, but rather failures to enforce. "There is a big problem with enforcement and the enforcement agencies not enforcing properly," he said, adding that budget-cutting and pressure to meet targets on managers had contributed to fire safety failures in some buildings.
Hear from the chartered surveyor and fire safety expert:
For campaigners, the fact that leaseholders and residents are still battling unsafe homes nearly a decade after Grenfell reflects what they describe as a systemic failure by successive governments and the building industry.
Giles said: many of the people that get in touch with them are struggling mentally, emotionally and financially despite years of promises that they would be protected from the costs and consequences of the building fire safety crisis.
Leaseholders across the country are continuing to face soaring insurance costs, delays to remediation works and uncertainty over whether their buildings would ever be fully signed off as safe.
Referring to the Grenfell fire, he said many residents initially believed the catastrophe was "an isolated incident," before gradually realising the full scale of failures across the housing sector.
He continued: "Developers build a lot of rubbish [...] and successive governments responsible for deregulation, a lack of oversight, they're equally as responsible and culpable as the developers," adding that leaseholders and residents - the victims in this crisis - should not be the ones made to pay to put it right."
Nearly a decade on from Grenfell, thousands of residents and leaseholders across London remain stuck in limbo still paying the price for institutional failures. The recent development of police pursuing potential criminal charges against 77 companies and individuals connected to the Grenfell fire is a stark reminder that accountability has been far too slow- and the legacy of Grenfell is still being lived by residents and leaseholders every day.
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