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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to paragraph 45 of the Government response to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on Cladding: Progress of Remediation, CP 281, published on 3 September 2020, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of taking into direct ownership the freehold of a building for which access to (a) assess and (b) provide remediation is being prevented.

Building owners are responsible for remediating unsafe buildings and the government has made extensive funding available for them to do so. It is important that building owners fulfil their building safety responsibilities and where they do not that they are held to account. Where building owners are stalling, they can expect to be subject to enforcement action by a local authority, fire and rescue service or the Building Safety Regulator; we released a joint statement with key building safety bodies committing to this last year. Regulators have an extensive set of powers which allow them to compel building owners to assess and remediate their buildings.

The Fire Safety Act 2021 and Building Safety Act 2022 strengthen enforcement tools for regulators, including introducing remediation orders which are issued by the First-tier Tribunal. These boost regulators’ existing powers under the Housing Act 2004 and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Building owners who fail to comply with enforcement action can be subject to criminal penalties. The government has provided over £8 million in funding to local authorities to expand their enforcement teams.

We also fund the Joint Inspection Team (JIT), a multidisciplinary team of experts which supports local authorities with inspections and enforcement; the JIT currently supports over a third of all local authority high-rise building safety inspections in England.