Building Safety

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the Minister for his tireless work over the past few months, which has led to this very welcome initiative. Will he clarify two points that arose from the exchange in another place yesterday? First, when asked about costs relating to fire doors and external wall insulation, the Secretary of State said that

“the freeholders, as the ultimate owners of these buildings, will be held responsible for all the work that is required, and we will make sure that leaseholders are not on the hook.”

He then confirmed this in a subsequent reply to Matthew Offord, saying:

“It is our intention that the ultimate owner of a building is responsible for all of the safety steps that are required, and we will use statutory means in order to ensure that that happens.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/1/22; col. 301.]


I read that as saying that leaseholders are protected for all safety steps, not just dealing with cladding. Secondly, while the Secretary of State repeatedly promised statutory protection for leaseholders, it is not clear what they should do about bills sitting on their mantelpiece for work completed or under way but not paid for. Do those leaseholders have statutory protection?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My noble friend always asks very pertinent questions and he knows this issue inside out. Rather than obfuscating this, I will give the straight answer. Of course, in protecting the leaseholders, someone else has to pay—that is the thrust of the question from my noble friend. When it comes to cladding, there is now funding in place and a plan to deliver that without touching anyone beyond the polluter, if we can get back the money put up by the taxpayer. Some leaseholders have obviously borne the brunt of the costs as well and that is regrettable. We cannot apply these protections retrospectively but, by having the reset statement issued by my right honourable friend, we can ensure that we protect many thousands—potentially hundreds of thousands—more leaseholders from being affected in the future by having those statutory protections in place.