Building Safety

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in warmly welcoming the Statement made earlier this week. As has been said, it marks an important milestone on the road to justice for the thousands of leaseholders whose lives have been on hold, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. I welcome what my noble friend has just said in updating us on the progress being made in making these blocks safer.

But, may I press my noble friend on two sentences in the Statement? The first is:

“Leaseholders should know that the law is on their side.”


The second is:

“When we were told that leaseholders must pay, we … protected”


them. However, there are two groups of leaseholders for whom, sadly, that is not the case, and who are not given protection under the Bill. The first is leaseholders who have enfranchised, following government encouragement, and become freeholders. When I raised this nearly a year ago in Committee, the words of my noble friend’s predecessor, my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh, gave me some assurance:

“They are effectively leaseholders that have enfranchised as opposed to freeholders.”—[Official Report, 28/2/22; col. GC 262.]


Sadly, after my amendment was rejected, they are effectively freeholders, and they do not have the protection extended to other leaseholders in the Bill.

The second category was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton: leaseholders in buildings under 11 metres, who are not covered by the Bill either, but they are confronted by the same problems as leaseholders in tall buildings. They are getting high service charges, they are living in buildings with defective cladding or other fire safety defects, and they are exposed to these costs. In both cases, I was promised consultation to remedy what I regard as a manifest injustice. Can my noble friend update me on the outcome of those consultations?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for reminding me that I have not spoken about buildings under 11 metres. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would never forgive me if I did not answer that question. I will start, though, with enfranchised leaseholders, which I do remember in the context of the Bill. The Government have published a call for evidence on leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres or five storeys, which closed on 14 November last year. We are analysing those responses and considering the feedback prior to finalising the policy. However, enfranchised leaseholders living in buildings covered by the developer remediation contract will be protected from the cost of remedying life-critical fire safety defects arising from buildings’ design and/or construction. Furthermore, leaseholders in buildings over 11 metres are protected from the costs of remediating unsafe cladding, even where the developer has not signed the contract, which is important. Costs may be met through the building safety fund or the new medium-rise fund. I think we are doing what my noble friend wants, although it might be a bit slower than he would have preferred.

On buildings under 11 metres, which I know have been a concern for many noble Lords in these debates, the Government are committed to understanding the full scale and nature of historical building safety issues facing leaseholders in these buildings. As such, we welcome further information. The department set up a dedicated inbox for leaseholders and managing agents of these buildings to contact the department about their specific buildings. We will work with them on that. We stress that the responsibility for the costs of fixing historical building safety defects should still rest with the building owners. They should not pass these costs on to the leaseholders but seek to recover costs from those responsible for building the unsafe buildings in the first place.

I would like to emphasise that the risk to life from historical fire safety defects is much lower in buildings under 11 metres. That is no excuse, but it is rare for these buildings to require building safety-related remediation works. The Government’s assessment therefore remains that extending the protection to buildings under 11 metres is probably neither needed nor proportionate, but we will work with leaseholders and agents of these buildings if they have specific issues.