Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when his Department plans to bring forward legislation to repeal Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government remains committed to abolishing Section 21 through a Renters’ Reform Bill which will enhance renters’ security. However, our collective efforts are currently focused on responding to the coronavirus outbreak.
Repealing Section 21 represents the largest change to renting in 30 years and it is only right that the reforms are taken forward in a considered manner. It is important that providing tenants with greater security of tenure is balanced with an assurance that landlords are able to recover their properties where they have valid reasons to do so. This is vital to ensuring the future supply of good quality housing in the rented sector.
We will bring forward the Renters’ Reform Bill at the appropriate time.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what recent discussions he has had with mortgage providers on automatic movement onto variable rate terms for people who are unable to remortgage due to outstanding fire safety issues, with regard to the affordability of those variable rate terms.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The lending industry has assured the Minister for Building Safety that their existing customers in multi-occupancy and multi-storey buildings with fire safety issues should be able to access a product transfer without penalty. Individual lenders will make a commercial decision where a leaseholder is looking to re-mortgage.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with housing providers who offer shared ownership in buildings where there are outstanding fire safety issues, in relation to the (a) ability of their residents to sell their share, (b) liability of shared owners for remediation payments, (c) ability of shared owners to sub-let and (d) ability of shared owners to buy the remainder of the leasehold.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has continued to engage with leaseholders and housing providers of all kinds at ministerial and official level, to understand their concerns on a range of issues and discuss various policies.
It is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they didn’t cause.
The Government is determined to remove barriers to fixing historic defects and identify financing solutions that help to protect leaseholders, whilst also helping to protect the taxpayer. The Government has asked Michael Wade to accelerate this work. We will provide an update in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what advice his Department is providing to social housing providers that offer shared ownership in buildings where there are outstanding fire safety issues, in relation to liability for remediation costs for (a) the provider and (b) individual shared owners.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has continued to engage with leaseholders and housing providers of all kinds at ministerial and official level, to understand their concerns on a range of issues and discuss various policies.
It is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about the cost of fixing historic safety defects in their buildings that they didn’t cause.
The Government is determined to remove barriers to fixing historic defects and identify financing solutions that help to protect leaseholders, whilst also helping to protect the taxpayer. The Government has asked Michael Wade to accelerate this work. We will provide an update in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of insurance claims made since July 2017 against developers’ insurance for remediation costs relating to fire safety issues have been successful, in cases where defects have been accepted by developers.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
This information is not held.
Asked by: Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what liability exists for surveyors who failed to identify and report building defects that created fire risks in breach of building regulations in force at the time of the surveyor's inspection and which were identified only later.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The forthcoming Building Safety Bill, the draft of which the Government published on 20 July 2020, will introduce far-reaching building safety reforms, including industry-led measures to improve competency across the sector. Through this we will create duty holders that are responsible for a building’s safety throughout its lifecycle with existing in-scope buildings transitioning into this system.
Chartered surveyors are regulated by RICS and members are required to have PII which provides a minimum level of indemnity cover for the professional risks they accept in undertaking their work. It is for the appropriate professional standards bodies to regulate the surveying profession. Government is not able to pre-determine what liability individual professionals hold for historic work.