£30m ‘waking watch’ fund for leaseholders announced

The government is to launch a £30m fund in the New Year to reduce costs for leaseholders forced to have a waking watch because of unsafe cladding.

The fund will pay for the installation of fire alarm systems in high-rise buildings with cladding, removing or reducing the need for costly interim safety measures such as ‘waking watch’.

The National Fire Chiefs Council have been clear in recent guidance that building owners should move to install common fire alarm systems as quickly as possible to reduce or remove dependence on waking watches.

The steps today will help worried leaseholders who may have faced high costs for interim safety measures by providing financial support and delivering a better, long term fire safety system in their buildings

Some buildings have already installed these systems due to the significant savings this offers, with leaseholders in those buildings, who on average were paying £137 per month for a waking watch, expected to collectively save over £3m per month.

The fund will open in January, but will also provide immediate, emergency support to Wicker Riverside Apartments in Sheffield to ensure that the 35 recently evacuated families should be able to return to their homes before Christmas.

A six-month extension to the deadline for building owners to complete their applications to the £1 billion Building Safety Fund has also been announced – with a new deadline for submissions of 30 June 2021.

‘I’ve heard first-hand from leaseholders the misery that rip-off waking watch costs have been bringing to residents of high-rise buildings with cladding,’ said housing secretary, Robert Jenrick.

‘I’m announcing today a £30m Waking Watch Relief Fund to help relieve the financial pressure on those residents and to ensure they are safe. I’m confident that this will make a real difference to worried leaseholders up and down the country this Christmas.

‘We have continued to prioritise the removal of unsafe ACM cladding throughout the pandemic and expect around 95% of remediation work will have been completed or be underway by the end of this year,’ he added.

The chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, Roy Wilsher added: ‘We welcome this new Waking Watch Relief Fund, which will help to reduce the financial burden for some leaseholders having to fund the costs of waking watches.

‘It has been our firm and long held expectation that building owners should move to install common fire alarms as quickly as possible and this funding is a positive step.’

Photo Credit – PublicDomainPictures (Pixabay)