More leaseholders to be shielded from building safety bills as cladding bill passes second reading
The government will widen cost protections to cover some flat buyers, residents of collectively owned blocks and owners of up to six properties, and says construction product manufacturers will be made to contribute.
The government has said it will extend protection from the cost of fixing dangerous buildings to groups of leaseholders who currently fall outside the rules, as MPs debated its cladding bill on Tuesday.
The proposals were set out by the Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, during the second reading of the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill. The bill was introduced on 14 October and passed its second reading on 27 October, along with the motions that set its timetable and spending, sending it on to detailed scrutiny.
Who would gain protection
Under the Building Safety Act 2022, many leaseholders cannot be charged for historic safety defects they did not cause. Eligibility is fixed by circumstances on 14 February 2022, the date the protections were first published, and that has left three groups exposed.
The first is people who bought a flat as their only or main home after that date but whose seller, or an earlier owner, did not qualify. The protected or unprotected status of a lease passes to each new buyer, so a later owner can inherit a gap. The government says it is looking at how to close this.
The second is leaseholders in buildings they own collectively, or where they have bought the freehold together. With no separate freeholder, the Act's protections do not apply, and residents can face some of the largest bills. New government funding will go towards fixing high-risk and high-cost internal fire safety defects in these blocks.
The third is people who owned four, five or six properties on the cut-off date. Protection from non-cladding defect costs currently stops at three properties. The government plans to raise the limit to six.
Detailed eligibility rules and funding arrangements will be added to the bill as it goes through Parliament or published alongside it, the department said.
What the bill itself does
The bill places a legal duty on those responsible for unsafe buildings to fix them. Ms Rayner told MPs that anyone who deliberately fails to deal with a building over 11 metres tall would face fines of up to £500,000 and, where needed, criminal prosecution. Authorities would be able to step in and arrange the work where those responsible repeatedly refuse.
It would also create a register of buildings between 11 and 18 metres, giving the government what Ms Rayner described as its first complete record of medium-rise blocks in England, and require fire risk appraisals of external walls to follow one consistent national approach. Failing to register a building could bring a civil penalty of up to £7,000, or up to £40,000 or prosecution in more serious cases.
A separate scheme, to be set out in the bill, would require manufacturers of construction products linked to historic unsafe cladding and insulation to contribute towards repairs. Developers and contractors who have paid for remediation would be able to pursue manufacturers without running into the technical legal barriers that stop them now. Ms Rayner said she intends to table further amendments on this as the bill progresses.
