In the wake of the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal’s (VCAT) ruling last week that those parties who consulted to builder LU Simon on Melbourne’s Lacrosse Building were responsible for the combustible cladding that caused a potentially fatal fire in 2014, Geoff Hanmer – Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture at UNSW – warned that legal costs pertaining to the estimated 1,000 buildings with flammable cladding could top $1 billion. He also warned that taxpayers could be forced to bear some of the costs given government deregulation allowing flammable cladding caused the proliferation of the material.
The builder of Parliament House in Canberra also argued that because our governments were aware of the dangers of flammable cladding, then taxpayers should wear some of the rectification costs.
