Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether she plans to review provisions within the Building Safety Act 2022 on removing the leasehold protection provisions for shared ownership leaseholders who staircase to 100% ownership and lose the statutory protections provided in their original lease.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Building Safety Act ensures that those who built defective buildings take responsibility for remedying them, that the industry contributes to fixing the problem, and that leaseholders are protected in law from crippling bills for historical safety defects. These leaseholder protections came into force on 28 June 2022, with new financial protections for leaseholders in relevant buildings with relevant historical safety defects.
Schedule 8, paragraph 6(5) of the Building Safety Act provides that any contributions required towards remediation costs are capped according to the share of the lease the leaseholder owned at the time the lease became qualified for the protections. This position does not change should a shared owner later increase their share by staircasing, including up to 100%. Further information on this can be found in the explanatory notes on the legislation, starting with note 1731: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/30/notes/division/18/index.htm.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will make an estimate of the potential impact of the average time taken to receive building control decisions on applications to carry out works on higher risk buildings on the costs of those works.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Our priority with the new regime is to ensure buildings are safe and decent. The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has 12 weeks to determine a building control approval application for new higher-risk buildings and 8 weeks to determine the applications for building work to existing higher-risk buildings. This is longer than had previously been the case. It is expected that dutyholders will consider and plan for any additional costs and adjust their programme of works to ensure that building work is carried out in a cost effective and efficient manner.
However, we recognise there are delays in processing building control approval applications for higher-risk building work and that these may have associated costs for developers. We are currently working to address delays within the higher-risk regime through a range of measures. The sector must also play its part in ensuring building control applications are of a good quality, extensive guidance is available on gov.uk.
As the higher-risk regime was introduced in October 2023, it is too soon to provide an impact assessment for the time it takes to get building control approval from the BSR. Under the Building Safety Act, the Secretary of State must appoint an independent person to review the effectiveness of the BSR and the higher-risk regime by 28 April 2027, which may include the cost impacts of the higher-risk regime on developers.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether her Department plans to review the types of building work that can be undertaken through (a) competent person schemes and (b) third party certification schemes.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Building Safety Regulator is responsible for oversight of the competent person schemes and has committed in its Strategic Plan 2023-2026 to carry out a review of the conditions of authorisation, which must be met by all competent person schemes to ensure they are fit for purpose.
In addition, the department is always looking to improve public and building safety and intends to review the operation of competent person schemes to identify whether improvements can be made, working with the Building Safety Regulator. This will include reviewing the types of work that can be carried out under the competent person schemes. We will consider whether and how this review might touch on third party certification schemes.