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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to his announcement of 10 January 2022 that leaseholders will not be held liable for fire safety defect remediation not of their own making, if he will introduce a moratorium on freeholders and managing agents enforcing leasehold agreements in the event that the enforcement relates to non-payment of an existing demand for payment from a leaseholder for their share of fire safety remediation.

Building owners and industry should make buildings safe without passing on costs to leaseholders, and leaseholders living in their own medium and high-rise buildings should not pay a penny to remediate historic cladding defects that are no fault of their own. It is also wrong to look to the taxpayer for another bailout for manufacturers and developers who created and installed dangerous fire safety building systems. Instead, we are clear that industry must develop a solution to resolve the problems they have caused and pay to fix them.

We will work intensively with industry to ensure they rapidly step up to the plate to help solve this problem. If they do not agree to solving this crisis, we will look to impose a solution in legislation. We are determined that no leaseholder should lose their homes as a result of forfeiture or eviction in building safety cases, and will work with colleagues across Government on achieving this in the period before these long term solutions are in place.