Residents have been through ‘six years of pain’ to make a block of flats safe after Slough Borough Council bought it for just £1, a leading councillor has said.

But he added that could soon come to an end with the work finally nearly finished – and tens of millions in costs recovered.

The council bought GRE5, the company that owns Nova House in Slough town centre in 2018 in order to replace flammable Grenfell-style cladding and ‘to protect the safety of residents’.

But costs soared in the following years to more than £33 million as structural issues were discovered.

READ MORE: Slough Borough Council makes major decision on future of The Curve

Conservative councillor Wal Chahal – responsible for council properties – said the decision taken under a previous Labour leadership to buy the building on Buckingham Gardens was ‘ludicrous’.

He said: “I’ll be very honest – I don’t know why in 2018 the council purchased the whole of GRE5 for £1.

“The amount of issues that we’ve had – the cladding issues and the costs that we have incurred – it’s just been ludicrous.”

He added: “We’re not a property management company, we’re not a company that looks after refurbishing properties and we should never have got into this.”

READ MORE: Slough Borough Council could lose nearly £3 million on Nova House

Councillor Chahal made the comments as council leaders approved plans for the future of Nova house at meetings on Monday, November 18, and on November 14.

He said the council and residents had gone through ‘six years of pain’. But he said the council ‘may end up breaking even on this and going from a complete loss of money for residents – taxpayer money’.

He added: “We’ve got to be mindful not to do this sort of thing in the future – buying something for a £1 isn’t always the best thing in the world.”

Reports to council leaders said much of the repair costs had been covered by funding from government grants and by an undisclosed sum from the insurers of the building’s original warrantee holder.

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The reports said Slough Borough Council could still lose between £1.5 and £2.8 million on the repairs. But the council’s senior property manager Pat Hayes said ‘skilful work’ by staff could mean Nova House may eventually be sold ‘with a nil or very small loss’.

He told council leaders on Monday: “This one is clearly a difficult situation from which we’ve managed to extract ourselves.

“It’s a good news story in that the leaseholders have not got a properly fire resistant and safe building and actually we’ve got a much better looking building in the town centre.”