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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what his Departments policy is on individuals with a Help to Buy Equity Loan purchasing a second property if the first property requires remediation for building safety faults.

Following a competitive tender at the end of our previous contract with Target, the service provision was awarded to Equinity Gateway Services, who have since rebranded to Lenvi, and who are international specialists in payments and technology-led services. Lenvi have now taken up provision of all Help to Buy customer service functions and will deliver service improvements for Help to Buy customers over the coming months.

Help to Buy customers are required to pay off their equity loan if they wish to purchase another home, as they must not have interest in any other residential property whilst they have the equity loan. This is clearly set out in the homebuyers guide and Equity Mortgage Deed. If a customer would like to pay off their equity loan, they would first need to have their home professionally valued to ascertain its current market value.

We recognise that those whose properties have building safety issues, such as unsafe exterior cladding, can present additional challenges in valuing. The process to get a valuation and redeem an equity loan for properties affected by cladding can be found on Gov.uk. We are aware that some customers are having difficulties finding a valuer prepared to value their properties. We have been working with the Homes England and Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) to try to find ways to help customers.

On December 6, the RICS published new valuation guidance for buildings 11 metres and above with cladding here. This guidance reflects the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act which confirmed that those at fault, not blameless leaseholders, will be the ones to pay to fix unsafe cladding; and the solutions in place to fix buildings 11m+.

This new guidance will help to resolve difficulties in valuing properties where cladding is present.

Our focus continues to be on helping customers to find a solution as quickly as possible, however we recognise that this has been difficult for a number of customers.