Flat owners across the country face financial ruin after MPs voted down a plan to protect them from crippling fire safety bills of up to £100,000 each.

An attempt to spare hundreds of thousands of leaseholders from the costs of Britain’s cladding crisis was defeated for the fifth time on Wednesday.

Despite 32 Conservative rebels, the Commons voted 322 to 256 to reject a House of Lords amendment aimed at stopping leaseholders from paying for post-Grenfell reforms.

Cladding campaigners say the ‘rug’ has been pulled out ‘from underneath a generation of homeowners’ who now face bankruptcy.

MPs have calculated that the total bill to fix unsafe buildings could reach £15bn, but so far the government has pledged just £5bn to fund cladding repairs on buildings over 18 metres tall.

It has offered loans on repairs on shorter properties, which it argues are less of a risk, but there are reports this scheme won’t come into place for years, despite many being hit with bills now.

Meanwhile, there is no funding for a host of other widespread safety defects exposed after 72 people died in the tragic Grenfell blaze four years ago.

Metro.co.uk has previously reported on how thousands of leaseholders are currently facing six-figure bills to pay for a litany of safety measures, including fire breaks, new balconies, safer doors and sprinkler systems as well as the removal of unsafe cladding.

Many say they are already at risk of bankruptcy due to paying for expensive interim measures such as a Waking Watch, which has sent service charges and building insurance rates soaring.

Peers had repeatedly tried to stop the owners of blocks of flats from passing the costs of repairs on to leaseholders, with the support of opposition MPs and some Tory backbenchers.

But yesterday’s defeated amendment to the Fire Safety Bill brings a crushing end to the long running parliamentary battle over who should pay to fix defects.

The bill, now set to become law, aims to toughen safety rules by clarifying that building owners must manage and reduce the risk of fire in their properties.

Campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal said the legislation passed unchanged ‘much to the horror of hundreds of thousands of innocent people across the country whose lives are being ruined by the buildings safety crisis’.

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It said the government had ‘fought hard’ against changes that would have saved leaseholders from ‘widespread bankruptcy and financial ruin caused by bad regulations, corporate malfeasance and shoddy building work’.

The statement added: ‘The headlines may focus on the huge costs of this crisis but this has always been as much a moral issue as it is a financial one.

‘Leaseholders simply cannot pay these huge costs – and nor should they have to.’

Christopher Pincher, the housing minister, said that the proposed changes might unduly burden the taxpayer and would further delay the process of remediation.

But Tory backbencher Bob Neill, who voted against the government, said the bill caused ‘collateral damage to innocent leaseholders and flies in the face of undertakings the government has regularly given’.

Boris Johnson has previously told parliament that leaseholders shouldn’t have to pay for the ‘unaffordable costs’ of fixing safety defects that they didn’t cause.

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During the Commons debate yesterday, Liberal Democrat MP Daisy Cooper called for an inquiry into the Government’s handling of the ‘fire safety scandal’, which she called ‘a scandal in a scandal’.

It is not known how many buildings will need to be repaired, and experts have warned checking every one could take 10 years to complete.

In the meantime, flat owners are unable to sell as banks are refusing to lend mortgages on homes that aren’t proven to be fire safe.

New data shows that fire-risk flats can sell for as little as a third of their purchase prices, while many homes are being valued at £0.

The Bank of England is now assessing the risk of another financial crash, as it was a collapse in house prices that triggered the global financial crisis in 2007.

Labour is calling for the government to pay for remediation up front and then go after the building companies responsible for building unsafe homes. Leaseholders have few legal options and often cannot recover money from developers even if regulations were not complied with at the time of construction.

Shadow minister Sarah Jones said that 14 separate companies and individuals with links to construction companies using the potentially lethal ACM [aluminium composite material] cladding on buildings have donated nearly £4m to the Conservatives since 2006.

The Commons housing select committee has today urged the government to abandon a plan to loan homeowners the money in buildings below 18 metres, saying a new, larger fund ‘that addresses the true scale of fire safety issues’ is needed.

It urged the government to properly measure the scale of the problem and to tax developers to help fund the cost of repairs. It also called on ministers to do more to work with local authorities to ensure people affected by the scandal have access to support amid reports of widespread mental health problems.

Campaigners say the crisis is putting their lives at risk as much as their finances and have vowed to keep on fighting for justice.

Emma Byrne, a spokeswoman from End Our Cladding Scandal said: ‘Nearly four years after Grenfell and thousands of buildings across the UK are still covered with combustible materials and structurally unable to withstand fire.

‘The fear of going bankrupt is nothing in comparison to the real and ongoing terror many of us experience when we lie in bed at night, trying to sleep, hoping this nightmare will end one day.

‘To quote Baroness Pinnock, the cladding scandal comes down, fundamentally, to a simple question of justice. We will keep fighting until we get it.’

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