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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to his announcement of 11 February 2021, Government to bring an end to unsafe cladding with multi-billion pound intervention, whether funding has been re-allocated from other Departmental spending priorities to support the policies on fire and building safety announced on 11 February 2021.

The Government announced an additional £3.5 billion to provide certainty that leaseholders in high rise residential buildings will face no cost for cladding remediation works, plus a generous financing scheme to ensure all leaseholders in medium and high rise blocks face no costs or very low costs if cladding remediation is needed.

To ensure the industry contributes towards these costs, the Government will introduce a “Gateway 2” developer levy that will be implemented through the Building Safety Bill and a new tax will be introduced for the United Kingdom’s residential property development sector in 2022 which will raise at least £2 billion over a decade to help pay for cladding remediation costs.

We will be providing further details of the grant, the loan, the levy and the tax.