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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to help people living in flats with unsafe cladding, bought using Help to Buy loans, obtain specialist valuations.

All customers who wish to pay off their equity loan need to have their home professionally valued first to ascertain its current market value. Those whose properties have building safety issues, such as unsafe exterior cladding, can present additional challenges in valuing. The process to get a valuation and redeem an equity loan for properties affected by cladding can be found on Target, the loan administrator's, website. We are aware that some customers are having difficulties finding a valuer prepared to value their properties, and have been working with the Homes England and RICS to try to find ways to help customers, including potentially unlocking more valuation options for them in the future.

On December 6, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) published new valuation guidance for buildings 11 metres and above with cladding here. This guidance reflects the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act which confirmed that those at fault, not blameless leaseholders, will be the ones to pay to fix unsafe cladding, and the solutions in place to fix buildings 11m+. This new guidance will help to resolve difficulties in valuing properties where cladding is present.