Why are people still living in fire-trap flats? Because we tore down the ‘red tape’

Just before 6am on 16 May 1968, Ivy Hodge entered her kitchen to make a cup of tea. The match she lit over the gas stove caused an explosion, blowing out the concrete panels in her kitchen. It also caused an entire corner of Ronan Point, the high-rise in east London where she lived, to collapse.

Hodge survived, but four people died and 17 were injured. The inquiry into the disaster found flaws in the construction of system-built housing. This led to changes in building regulations for tower blocks. The shocking visual impact of the scene – one corner of the block had collapsed like a house of cards – made clear what happens if buildings are not constructed to withstand disasters rather than just everyday stresses and strains.

A report on the Grenfell Tower fire leaked to the London Evening Standard points out that the building – which was built after the Ronan Point explosion – was able to stay standing because of the width of the concrete on its lower floors, despite the ferocity of the blaze. And yet, had the tower been built to the lower end of modern building regulations, it is likely it would have collapsed, the report concluded.

After Ronan Point, the public clamoured for safer homes, and measures were taken to prevent a repeat. But in the decades that followed, this belt-and-braces approach gave way to complacency, and an apparent pursuit of profit over safety. This complacency is obvious in the problems experienced by the tenants and homeowners in a new private property development in south-east London. New Capital Quay, a name as apt as if Mammon himself had decided to milk the property boom, currently has fire wardens patrolling the 11 blocks 24/7, after warnings from the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) about safety concerns, including Grenfell-style flammable cladding.

Owners and tenants of the complex’s 900 flats have been raising concerns for months. One of the housing association renters, Simone Joseph, expressed concern back in February that the cladding remained, despite failing safety tests. Ruth Montlake, an 85-year-old tenant with hearing difficulties, worries that she won’t hear fire alarms and will struggle to escape from the seventh floor.

Cecile Langevin, who lives in the development with her son and husband and who passed her pregnancy due date at the weekend, was stunned to find the value of her home has fallen from £475,000 to £50,000. After buying in good faith, the family, like many others on the development, face the prospect of either mountains of negative equity if they want the cladding gone and peace of mind in terms of physical safety, or accepting the financial reality and remaining in an unsafe home.

The Langevins took out a £95,000 help-to-buy loan from the government, and are now involved in legal wrangling over whether they owe the government 20% of the current market value – about £10,000 – or the original loan amount. Langevin believes many other neighbours used the scheme, meaning the financial stake the government stands to lose in this and many other new-build developments with fire safety risks is considerable. Many experts warned that the government ploughing money into new-build housing would only inflate the property market. That punt, after Grenfell, looks all the more foolish.

The government argues that the freeholders of developments such as New Capital Quay, and similar ones in Croydon, Salford and around the country, have a “moral duty” to replace cladding and make it fire-safe without loading the cost on to residents. In reality, they have no such duty: the government’s “bonfire of red tape” has led to developers being able to build properties that present risks to safety, but passing inspections and conforming to regulations dating from the years before the Grenfell blaze.

Disasters are rare, which is why the complacency of politicians and developers might have blossomed: fires are relatively common but usually contained. Disasters can also be averted, which is why the rigorous approach after Ronan Point was the correct response. After the 2009 blaze in Lakanal House, south London, which killed six people, fire regulations should have been bolstered, and institutions such as Southwark council, which breached regulations, should have faced harsher penalties.

Instead, we were gifted David Cameron’s assault on regulation. Cameron boasted that the corner-cutting and revocation of many regulations on building and business would save £500 per home built: a small sum in the grand scheme of things. Weighing it against the value of a potential lost human life should be impossible.

Ten months on from Grenfell, any form of clarity on the future, or even the present, would be welcome. Yet families who escaped are still living in hotels, and thousands find they are living in homes clad with the same kind of aluminium panels that covered Grenfell. It was government complacency and amenability to lobbying that created such a catastrophic mess, and yet there is scant sign of even a wish to provide redress for those stuck in these flats now, or of improved fire regulations for buildings in the future.

• Dawn Foster is a Guardian columnist