Buildings: Fire Prevention

(asked on 19th July 2021) - View Source

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 how funding for remediation of building safety works will be sourced if it cannot be recovered from (a) the original developer of a building or (b) any existing warranties or insurances.


Answered by
Christopher Pincher Portrait
Christopher Pincher
This question was answered on 22nd July 2021

Our £5.1 billion investment in grant funding for cladding remediation on residential buildings of 18 metres and taller in England will protect hundreds of thousands of leaseholders from the cost of remediating unsafe cladding on their homes.

We are also stepping in to provide a generous finance scheme for the remediation of combustible cladding on medium-rise residential buildings, where the risk is lower. Under this scheme leaseholders in residential buildings between 11-18 metres will pay no more than £50 per month towards the cost of combustible cladding remediation.

Government funding does not absolve building owners of their responsibility to ensure that their buildings are safe. They should consider all routes to meet costs, protecting leaseholders where they can - for example through warranties and recovering costs from contractors for incorrect or poor work.

Under the Defective Premises Act, compensation can be claimed from anyone responsible for the defective work, such as developers, builders and other contractors, architects and designers.

We have seen many responsible developers and building owners stepping up to take responsibility for correcting these defects - for example, in more than half of the high-rise private sector buildings with ACM.     

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