Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Answer of 16 October 2024 to Question HL1248, on Community Ownership Fund, what her Department's planned timetable is for determining whether the Community Ownership Fund will be open to future applications.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
I refer the hon Member to the answer given to Question UIN 11941 on 8 November 2024.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Answer of 16 October 2024 to Question HL1248, on Community Ownership Fund, what the status is of Community Ownership Fund grants which were applied for before the General Election.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
I refer the hon Member to the answer given to Question UIN 11941 on 8 November 2024.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to the Developer pledge letter, published 13 April 2022, what steps he is taking to progress the implementation of the Developer pledge.
Answered by Marcus Jones
On 13 July we published the draft of a contract with developers. The draft contract, once finalised and executed, will turn the commitments made in the pledge into a legally binding agreement.
Publication marks the start of a four-week period of engagement, during which we will refine the contract as necessary. As well as discussing the contract with developers during this period, we will engage other interested parties including representatives of building owners, managing agents, residents, leaseholders, lenders and insurers.
We plan to have the terms of the contract finalised by 10 August. We expect developers to have signed the contract by the end of September.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment on the financial impact on UK pension funds of the Building Safety Act 2022.
Answered by Marcus Jones
The Building Safety Act puts in place legal protections for leaseholders from historical building safety costs. The Act legally protects qualifying leaseholders (those living in their own home or with no more than three UK properties in total) from all costs relating to the remediation of unsafe cladding and contains robust and far-reaching protections from non-cladding costs, including those relating to interim measures such as waking watches. Where those directly responsible (for example, developers) cannot be held to account, building owners and landlords, rather than leaseholders, will now be the first port of call to pay for historical safety defects.
The Building Safety Act spreads the costs of fixing historical building safety defects as fairly and equitably as possible across the system. If building owners and landlords on 14 February were, or were related to the developer of the building, they are liable for the full cost of remediating all building safety defects, whether cladding or otherwise, to the benefit of all leaseholders. Qualifying leaseholders will be protected from all costs for remediation works if the building owners and landlord have a net worth of more than £2 million per in-scope building.
It is not our default expectation that building owners and landlords, including pension funds, will have to fund remediation works from their own resources: we want them to pursue those responsible for defective work, including associated companies of developers and manufacturers. That is why y there is now a toolkit of measures available under the Building Safety Act 2022 to enable that to happen.
We have retrospectively extended the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 from 6 to 30 years; we have extended the reach of civil liability to associated companies of developers, including trusts, to ensure that some of the largest businesses in the sector who have used shell companies and other complex corporate structures to be pursed for contributions; and we have created a cause of action which will allow manufacturers of construction products to be pursued where defective or mis-sold products have been used in buildings.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will consult (a) building owners, (b) managing agents and (c) residents of buildings on the delivery of the commitments pledged by developers for buildings those developers no longer own or control.
Answered by Marcus Jones
On 13 July we published the draft of a contract with developers. The draft contract, once finalised and executed, will turn the commitments made in the pledge into a legally binding agreement.
Publication marks the start of a four-week period of engagement, during which we will refine the contract as necessary. As well as discussing the contract with developers during this period, we will engage other interested parties including representatives of building owners, managing agents, residents, leaseholders, lenders and insurers.
We plan to have the terms of the contract finalised by 10 August. We expect developers to have signed the contract by the end of September.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what measures his Department will take to locate polluters under the first tier of the waterfall model of liability contained in the Building Safety Act 2022 before placing liability on other parties.
Answered by Marcus Jones
Under the Waterfall model set out in the Building Safety Act 2022, developers are the first to pay for the costs of remediating defective buildings, rather than the leaseholders that have previously been liable for costs
During the previous Secretary of State’s appearance before the Levelling up and Housing Committee on 13 June 2022, he announced that a new Recovery Strategy Unit has been established to help pursue and expose developers who have failed to pay for defects that they have created.
The unit will identify and pursue these individuals and firms using all appropriate means, including through the courts, to ensure that developers do the right thing and take responsibility for defects they created.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will commit to not developing any forms of rent control as part of the planned white paper and legislation on reform of the private rented sector.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Government does not support the introduction of controls on the amount of rent that landlords can charge in the private rented sector. Historical evidence suggests that rent controls would discourage investment in the sector and would lead to declining property standards as a result, which would not help landlords or tenants.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what Government body will determine (a) which buildings are most at risk due to dangerous cladding and (b) a matrix of which buildings to remediate first.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is prioritising remediation on the highest risk buildings. After the Grenfell tragedy, the Government identified the high-rise buildings with the highest risk ACM cladding and made sure that interim measures were installed to reassure and protect residents while remediation of those building is taken forward.
Government funding is targeted to high rise buildings (18 metres and over) with ACM and other forms of unsafe cladding. The fire risk is lower in buildings under 18 metres and costly remediation work is usually not needed. Where fire risks are identified, they should always be managed proportionately. The Government has therefore focused its financial support on high-rise residential buildings over 18 metres because we know that the risk to multiple households is greater when fire does spread in buildings of this height. As the Secretary of State said in his announcement on Monday 10 January, taxpayers should not be funding the remediation of 11-18 metres buildings. It is for industry to develop a solution to this problem and ensure that leaseholders living in their own flats in medium buildings do not pay a penny to remediate historic cladding defects that are no fault of their own. That is why we are asking the industry to step up and agree how they can fund cladding remediation in the next two-three months. Detailed information on which buildings are eligible for Government funding can be found in Prospectus Annex A: Technical Information of the Building Safety Fund Prospectus, available at: www.gov.uk/guidance/remediation-of-non-acm-buildings#prospectus---outlining-eligibility-for-the-fund.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions he has has with the HSE on plans to provide guidance on the proportionality of building safety works necessary for buildings to be deemed safe in the context of his Department's Building Safety Programme; and what assessment he has made of the adequacy of (a) the time scale and (b) funding for producing that guidance in the context of prioritising people's safety.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
Ministers and officials from my department are in regular discussion with the Health and Safety Executive on matters relating to building safety, including the need for the market to behave in a more risk proportionate manner. The work outlined in the Written Ministerial Statement of 21 July is now underway and further details will be made available in due course.
Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
What steps he is taking to promote homeownership.
Answered by Robert Jenrick - Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
This Government cares deeply about helping even more people to achieve the dream of owning their own home, and turning Generation Rent into Generation Buy.
And today we see many of the country’s largest lenders launch the new 95% mortgages – backed by the Government’s new mortgage guarantee announced by the Chancellor at last month’s Budget.
This comes on top of our Shared Ownership reforms, our new Help to Buy scheme, and our First Homes scheme – all of which will help more people get onto the housing ladder and have a home they can call their own.