While the fund allotted will be used exclusively to fix government-owned buildings with cladding issues, no money has been set aside for owners to remove flammable cladding from private dwellings. This, despite the fact that removing cladding from affected buildings is an expensive process.

As unreasonable as it sounds, the Victorian government expects the owners and residents to ‘foot the bill’ that runs into billions of dollars, for a problem they were neither responsible for, nor had any control over.

The Victorian Building Authority (VBA) is adding salt to the wound by urging the owners to personally rectify the faulty cladding on hundreds of buildings built by professionals, which apparently ticked off so-called ‘compliance approvals’. In fact, the reason so many buildings are covered in flammable cladding is being pointed out as the failure of government regulations.  

To solve the burning cladding issue without burdening owners and residents with undue responsibilities and expenses, we at Silver Service Real Estate support industry partners, the Cladding Action Group, call on the Victorian Government to:

• • Make laws to necessitate and pressurise building professionals who have designed, constructed, and approved buildings in non-compliant cladding to fix the problem, at their cost.

• • Provide direct funding for owners of affected property to replace non-compliant cladding, where the builder has failed to do so and/ or deregistered.

• • Introduce statutory warranties against developers of high-rise buildings so they too can be held accountable for non-compliant products and defects on their projects; and

• Empower the VBA to compel builders and developers to act on defective building works following the handover of buildings to owners.

We have this press release to share on this matter, Media Release – CAG_budget reply 290519

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