A request works best when backed by menaces. The housing secretary, Michael Gove, seems to be close to getting much of what he wants from stage one of his operation to raise serious sums to fix the cladding and fire-safety crisis that was appallingly highlighted by the Grenfell Tower disaster of 2017.
Fifty-three developers were invited, on pain of being cut out of planning approvals, to sign a building safety pledge that commits them to fund the costs of remediation work on all medium- and high-rise buildings they have built over the past 30 years. The number of corporate holdouts is likely to be in low single digits.
