Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that risk assessors commissioned by participant developers in the self-remediation scheme are (a) independent and (b) not reliant on one developer for their entire income.
The developer remediation contract requires that relevant assessors are suitably experienced, qualified, independent and competent. The department also requires the developer and the assessor to sign statements confirming that they are separate financial entities, in line with guidance issued by authorities including RICS, the International Arbitration Board, the International Bar Association and ISO/IEC 17020:2012 Conformity assessment.
The department does not recommend a list of assessors to developers. The British Standards Institution’s PAS 9980 standard and the developer remediation contract make clear that relevant assessors must meet the required standard, and the department regularly commissions independent audits of assessments obtained by developers to make sure that those standards have been met.