Canary Wharf receives first cladding bill under new powers
Michael Gove has launched legal action against the landlord of a Canary Wharf apartment complex to pay over £20.5m towards building safety works.
The Grenfell Tower disaster left thousands of people across England heartbroken and has since forced the UK government to evaluate the safety of buildings across the country. With this in mind, last week the Secretary of State served the landlord of an apartment complex in Canary Wharf with legal action to improve the safety of the building.
From this, the landlord will be required to pay £20.5m towards building safety works.
In addition, according to government officials, the housing department have also applied to a property tribunal in a bid to get John Christodoulou’s Yianis Holdings Ltd, a privately owned property organisation, to contribute to fixing safety problems at the Canary Riverside development.
Two other companies in the Yianis Group have been affected by the action, which marks the first move by Gove to use legal powers under the Building Safety Act. The legislation was passed in 2022 following the aftermath of Grenfell tower.
The department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said: ‘Where developers and freeholders have profited from unsafe buildings, we will use powers in the landmark Building Safety Act to recover funds.
‘We will continue to take action against those who do not take responsibility for building safety issues.’
The Building Safety Act allows the government, regulators or other ‘interest persons’ such as leaseholders to apply for orders requiring building owners, developers, or others to fix building safety defects or make payments towards the costs.
Against this backdrop, Yianis Group said that property tribunals had uncovered that the two other companies were ‘accountable persons’ under the act for the four residential buildings within the Canary Riverside development.
According to the developments website, inspections of the buildings unmasked problems with cladding and insulation that needed to be remediated.
The fire at Grenfell Tower tragically killed 72 people when it spread through the external cladding. It triggered a building safety crisis that led to defects being identified in residential blocks across the country and has left some leaseholders unable to sell their properties and are now, as a result, facing huge bills.
Image: Fas Khan
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