“By the end, we owed nearly £2,000 to the bank every month. Any equity we had in the property was just dwindling away,” said Law, 55, who lives in Wrexham.

In 2017 the fire at Grenfell Tower in west London killed 72 people and exposed widespread fire safety issues at buildings across the country.

More than 5,000 buildings have been identified as having unsafe cladding that needs to be removed. This has left many owners unable to sell their properties, while facing escalating service charges to fund repairs.

One of the main hurdles homeowners face is getting an EWS1 (external wall system) form, which outlines what needs to be done to improve safety or verifies that the building is safe. Many banks will not agree on a mortgage without one of these.

Martin Boyd from the campaign group Leasehold Knowledge Partnership said: “Eight years on from Grenfell we’re still seeing far too many people facing huge amounts of stress and costs due to the building safety crisis.”

• A high-rise fire killed Catherine. The cladding firm kept on selling

‘Bankruptcy seems the only way out’

Law, from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, burst on to the football scene in the 1980s as a teenage central defender at Queens Park Rangers and got his only cap for the national team in 1990. After suffering what he thought was a career-ending foot injury in 1992 he left the game for three years and went backpacking around the world.

It was on Baga beach in Goa during a kickabout with other travellers where he first thought he could return to the game. “I’ll be honest, I thought I might be able to play for Merthyr Tydfil,” he said.

He restarted his career at Wolves in 1994, but a snapped cruciate at his next club, Millwall, ended his playing days for good in 2000. Five years after that he bought the £380,000, three-bedroom penthouse in Birmingham with a £66,000 deposit. He chose an interest-only mortgage, hoping that the property would increase in value enough to clear the debt.

He and Jennifer lived in the flat for two years before renting it out, using the income to supplement his earnings from sports coaching and working with at-risk youths. They considered selling the property in 2010, when the family relocated to Australia for four years, now with two children in tow, but decided against it: “I thought, I’ll hold on to it and when HS2 is built and I’m 55, we’ll sell up and we’ll be OK in retirement,” Law said. “Then the cladding crisis happened and everything went wrong.”

Before his voluntary repossession, he owed £48,000 in mortgage payments, £10,000 in council tax and £24,000 in service charges.

Law is now in discussions with the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) about declaring himself bankrupt. “We have nothing: no savings, no pension, no income. We just want to move on and bankruptcy seems the only way out,” he said.

Health problems in recent years have made it even harder for the family to make money. Law suffers from an arthritic hip and requires ankle fusion surgery — both hangovers from his football career — and in 2022 was diagnosed with colon cancer, from which he received the all-clear in 2024.

• The cladding scandal still retains its power to shock

“There are debt companies chasing me for council tax and service charges. I’ve spoken to the PFA and they said that bankruptcy is a way of starting afresh and getting on with my life,” he said.

Bankruptcy is a way of getting your debt written off, but can result in assets being taken from you and will significantly damage your credit score and ability to borrow cash, as well as barring you from certain jobs and positions in public office. In many cases, you will have to wait at least six years to secure a standard mortgage again. To declare bankruptcy, you must submit a petition to the courts and pay £680.

Law, who lives in a rented house in Wrexham, is aware of the financial implications but sees no other way out. He said: “I could spend the rest of my life paying back these debts, but they aren’t my fault and the only way to avoid having to pay back these unfair costs is to just draw a line under it.”

Giles Grover from the campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal said: “Sadly, Brian’s desperate situation is far from unique.

“Lives are still being ruined by the building safety scandal — whether the hundreds of thousands of people still trapped in their homes or landlords who, through no fault of their own, are seeing property prices dramatically affected.”

A spokesperson for Remus said: “Our duties to our client, the resident’s management company, preclude us from commenting on this particular case. However I can confirm that the remediation of the cladding on block C was completed on August 4, 2023.”