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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether he is taking steps to protect leaseholders from remediation costs related to structural building defects that are not considered a "relevant defect" under the Building Safety Act, but which are discovered during cladding remediation works.

The Building Safety Act 2022 sets out the broad range of defects to which the leaseholder protections apply. The core principle is that the historical defect puts people's safety at risk from the spread of fire, or structural collapse.

The Building Safety Act 2022 also provides a toolkit of measures to enable those responsible for defective work to be pursued. These include retrospectively extending the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 from six to 30 years where claims can be made for defective work relating to the construction of dwellings where the work rendered the dwelling unfit for habitation at the time of completion

Additionally, civil claims can now be brought against manufacturers of, or those who have supplied, defective or mis-sold construction products, or those who have supplied or marketed in breach of regulations, where these products have been incorporated in a dwelling and that has caused or contributed to a dwelling being unfit for habitation.