Ballymore to sign UK fire safety contract after Gove’s warning

Seán Mulryan’s Ballymore Properties has confirmed it will sign a contract to repair homes with safety risks exposed by the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire after being named by the UK government among the 11 firms who had missed a deadline to do so.

UK secretary of state for levelling up Michael Gove said earlier this week that 39 developers had signed the contract, obliging them to spend £2 billion (€2.3 billion) to pay for repairs to buildings with unsafe cladding and other fire safety issues.

However, Mr Gove warned the 11 firms that had not put pen to paper by the March 13th deadline that they could be banned from operating in the UK if they did not signed the contract within one week.

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Mr Gove told the House of Commons on Tuesday: “Those companies will be out of the house building business in England entirely unless and until they change their course.”

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He said the companies in question would not be eligible for the UK government’s new responsible actors’ scheme, aimed at tightening up standards in the UK construction sector and forcing developers to replace dangerous cladding, meaning they could be barred from receiving planning permission or securing building control approval.

Mr Gove named Mr Mulryan’s Ballymore among the companies that had yet to sign the contract, a list of which was published on the department for levelling up, housing and communities website. However, a spokeswoman for Ballymore told The Irish Times on Wednesday: “We are currently finalising the last remaining details. We will sign the contract and expect to do so very soon.”

The other 10 companies that had not signed the contract are Abbey Developments; Avant; Dandara; Emerson Group’s Jones Homes brand; Galliard Homes; Inland Homes; Lendlease; London Square; Rydon Homes and Telford Homes.

Last year, Ballymore was one of the 48 signed up to the so-called “developers’ pledge” in the UK, guaranteeing that apartment owners or occupiers in blocks it has built or refurbished over the last 30 years, will not have to pay to ensure the structures meet new, post-Grenfell safety rules.

The developer has, in recent years, been accused by British politicians, including former prime minster Boris Johnson and former Labour Party shadow-chancellor John McDonnell, of moving too slowly to remove potentially flammable cladding material from some of its schemes.

In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, the UK government wanted developers to pay to bring buildings into line with the new standards, even where they had complied with previous rules. Estimates of the total bill to the industry run to £4 billion.

Filed before Christmas, accounts for Ballymore Ltd and Subsidiaries, a key part of its British operation, show that the business lost £36.25 million before tax in the 12 months to March 31st last, after spending £36.9 million on new fire protections for its buildings.

Bloomberg reported recently that Ballymore had offered redundancies to 30 of its roughly 700 employees in London over the past three months amid a slowdown in the UK’s housing market.