Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what discussions he has had with officials in his Department on the regulation of the managing agent sector prior to Building Safety Fund monies being dispersed to managing agents for building remediation.
The Building Safety Fund will cover all reasonable costs for eligible works that are necessary to remediate unsafe non-ACM cladding systems on high-rise residential buildings, including a range of direct project costs such as professional team fees and managing agents' fees in respect of administering qualifying expenditure.
Reasonable costs must be informed by an industry standard approach to specification and procurement of works, having regard to cost benchmarks established from comparable projects.
Higher than expected costs will be challenged and will be subject to further scrutiny, and the level of grant may be reduced. The Government is considering the recommendations in the report on the regulation of property agents from the working group chaired by Lord Best, and we will continue to work with the industry on improving best practice.