Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that penalties are enforced for businesses and freeholders that delay works on cladding issues.

Landlords are legally responsible for making sure their buildings are safe and must do so without delay. Where works on cladding issues are delayed, regulators have legal powers to compel work by a set time and can penalise inaction. In 2023, Newham Council became the first council to successfully prosecute a landlord for delays in removing dangerous cladding. Others are following suit: As of 19 February 2025, enforcement action has been, or is being, taken under the Housing Act against 532 landlords of 11m+ buildings with unsafe cladding.

This Government is committed to working hand-in-glove with regulators to get unsafe buildings fixed without delay. We recently published ‘remediation enforcement guidance for regulators’, and launched a new fund which LAs and FRAs can access to obtain funding to get their own specialist legal advice on enforcement cases. The Department’s Recovery Strategy Unit also holds organisations to account who are failing to fix unsafe buildings and contribute to remediation costs.

Our Remediation Acceleration Plan sets out our plan to go further in making sure there are severe penalties for landlords that delay works on cladding issues. We intend to introduce new criminal and civil sanctions for those who fail to assess and remediate unsafe buildings within fixed timescales, backed by a further £33 million investment in 25/26 to provide local and national regulators with capacity and capability to tackle hundreds of enforcement cases a year, targeting those neglecting to quickly remediate their buildings.