Building Safety Defects: Costs

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we are working very closely with the sector. I point out that there was a £400,000 fund specifically for providers in the social sector to remove aluminium composite material, the most serious form of unsafe cladding. In addition, where social landlords are thinking of passing costs on to leaseholders, there is an opportunity for them to apply to the building safety fund, which many of them have indeed done.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Could the Minister answer my question in very simple language, because I just do not understand this? The leaseholders did not design the building, do not own it and did not apply the faulty cladding to it. So why are they paying anything at all towards replacing it?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

It is quite clear that the building owner and freeholder have responsibility for keeping the building safe. Whether the costs are passed on to leaseholders is a matter for the individual lease, but we are doing all we can to step in to help recoup the money that should rightly be paid by the developers and have also put forward taxpayer funding to the tune of over £5 billion at this point.