The previous Housing Secretary, Robert Jenrick, had authorised a £3.5bn fund earlier this year to remove unsafe cladding from buildings over 18 metres.
However, buildings between 11 and 18 metres were not covered by the Building Safety Fund, leaving leaseholders to foot the £50 a month bill to remove the dangerous cladding. Gove has now paused this after questioning why they should have to pay for it in the first place.
Gove said: “We have a responsibility to relieve some of the obligations faced by leaseholders at the moment, who are innocent parties in this and who are being in many cases asked to pay disproportionate sums when there are individuals in business – some still in business – who are guilty men and women.
“I’m still unhappy with the principle of leaseholders having to pay at all, no matter how effective a scheme might be in capping their costs or not hitting them too hard at any one time. My question is why do they have to pay at all?”
The first report from the Grenfell Inquiry found lessons from the 2009 fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell which resulted in multiple deaths and 10 injuries, had not been learned by the time of the Grenfell disaster eight years later.
With increased focus now on how the government has handled the disaster, Gove admitted that his department "will be seen to have, on a couple of occasions, not necessarily appreciated the importance of fire safety and not necessarily done everything in the wake of the Lakanal House tragedy that it should have done".
