Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of introducing a scheme of support similar to that offered by the Government for properties affected by precast reinforced concrete to help homeowners affected by deficient cladding.

The Government has made £1.6 billion of funding available to support the remediation of high rise residential buildings with unsafe cladding in England. This will deal with some of the highest risk and highest cost safety defects in our existing high rise stock, protecting leaseholders from the vast majority of these costs.

However, Government funding is not the only means of funding remediation. The Government expects building owners to meet costs without passing them on to leaseholders wherever possible, through their own resources or by recovering costs from applicable warranty schemes or from the developers or contractors who were responsible for the installation of unsafe cladding, as is happening with more than half of the private sector buildings with Aluminium Composite Material cladding.

The Government is accelerating work on a long-term solution. We are determined to remove barriers to fixing historic defects and identify financing solutions that help to protect leaseholders, whilst also helping to protect the taxpayer. We will provide an update as soon as we are in a position to do so.