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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department is taking steps to ensure that unprofitable developers that built faulty and dangerous buildings are accountable under the Responsible Actors Scheme.

The Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) Regulations 2023 were signed into law on 3 July. We intend to launch the Scheme this Summer.

The eligibility criteria include a £10 million per annum average operating profits threshold, in order to make sure that the Scheme's initial focus is on substantial, profitable businesses. Companies that developed defective buildings but do not meet the profits threshold will be able to join the Scheme voluntarily, and we intend to extend the Scheme to cover all developers who have developed defective residential buildings over 11m and should be paying to fix them. The Building Safety Act 2022 also provides other ways to pursue developers who were responsible for unsafe buildings.

The regulations make it possible for entities which are controlled by a prohibited developer but are not in the building industry to apply for an exception from the prohibitions.