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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the letter from the Secretary of State for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to Lord Blencathra on 2 September, whether the Participant Developers had signed the final version of the Draft Contract by the end of September; and whether they will list all the developers that (1) had, and (2) had not, signed it.

As of 25 October 2022, 49 of the largest developers have signed a pledge to take responsibility for all necessary work to address life-critical, fire-safety defects on buildings 11 metres and over that they had a role in developing or refurbishing. We have published the names of the developers who have signed the pledge on (attached) gov.uk.

The Government published a draft of the developer remediation contract on 13 July 2022 and has since received comments and held discussions on the draft with various parties. We are in advanced negotiations with developers and other stakeholders to finalise the contract, which will turn the commitments made in the pledge into a legally binding agreement. We are also in ongoing discussions with several developers who have not yet signed the pledge and will invite them to sign the finalised self-remediation contract. We will publish the final form of the contract as soon as possible, at which point developers will be asked to sign the contract. We also intend to publish the names of the developers who sign the contract.

We have made clear that developers who fail to do the right thing face significant commercial consequences. In August, we made commencement regulations that are an important step towards giving Ministers powers to stop developers who fail to do the right thing from commencing developments for which they have planning permission and from being granted building control sign-off.