Since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, fire cladding issues have had a significant impact on the construction industry and residential property sector.
Many parties have been caught up in legal disputes, changing Government guidance and complex arguments about external wall fire safety compliance. Individual leaseholders are generally liable to pay the cost of remediating their buildings and are often unable to sell or re-mortgage properties pending completion of remedial works. Original developers are under significant legal, commercial and political pressures to cover repair costs. Add the potential for personal liability and corporate manslaughter into the mix in the event of a worst-case scenario fire, and developers are understandably struggling to achieve consistency and control over their responses.
What do we do?
As a professional services group, we have both legal and consulting specialists who advise across a range of fire safety and cladding issues, both proactively and reactively depending on what support our clients need and what situation they find themselves in.
Gateley Legal
We have full-service property development, construction, and regulatory and business defence teams who act for many developers, including most of the top 20 UK housebuilders. We are acutely aware of the issues and have been working with our clients to navigate the competing issues of risk control, cost control, removing personal risk, eliminating corporate manslaughter risk, advising on liabilities, and pursuing recovery claims against consultants and contractors where possible.
Gateley Vinden
Our Gateley Vinden team of chartered surveyors and architects have specialist expertise in the investigation and assessment of fire cladding, together with the design, specification and implementation of rectification and remedial work where deficiencies in fire performance (or other defects) are subsequently identified.
