Two years after a fire destroyed the Spectrum Building in Dagenham, east London, leaseholders remain trapped in financial limbo, still paying mortgages on flats that no longer exist while awaiting compensation. The building's freeholder, Arinium Ltd, collapsed into bankruptcy shortly after the August 2024 blaze, leaving administrators to sort out remaining funds, including insurance payouts, with no timeline for when or how much residents will receive. The case highlights the human cost of the UK's slow-moving cladding remediation crisis, which has continued largely unresolved despite promises of urgent government action.

The fire broke out in the early hours of 26 August 2024, spreading via scaffolding erected for cladding replacement work, and left more than 80 people homeless. Insurance is covering emergency accommodation for only three years, leaving residents facing the prospect of paying both rent and mortgages if compensation isn't settled in time, while some fear that fines from any prosecution of the freeholder could reduce the pot available to them. Then deputy prime minister Angela Rayner vowed the day after the fire to speed up cladding remediation, yet the proportion of affected buildings nationally where work has started or finished has risen only from 50% to 53% in two years.