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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of using the same criteria to determine the eligibility for the Building Safety Fund as used for the EWS1 system to ensure leaseholders whose buildings who fail the EWS1 scheme can access financial support for remediation work.

The key eligibility criteria for the Building Safety Fund is the presence of the unsafe non-ACM cladding and the height of the building which should be at least 18 metres, as set out in the prospectus for the Fund at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remediation-of-non-acm-buildings. This reflects the exceptional fire risk that certain cladding products pose at that height, as previously noted by Dame Judith Hackitt observed in her independent report. Government guidance is clear that building safety is the responsibility of building owners and we have given expert advice on a range of safety issues to provide clarity on buildings of all heights.

The EWS1 process is an industry led approach to assess financial risk to inform valuation for mortgage purposes. The EWS1 process is not a safety certificate and a building cannot ‘fail’ an EWS1 assessment.