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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has made an estimate of the number of buildings with safety defects where the individuals responsible for those defects cannot be located.

The department has not made any assessments of the number of buildings with fire safety defects where the individuals responsible cannot be located.

The department has published estimates on the number of mid-rise residential buildings which require remediation, partial remediation or mitigation to alleviate life-safety fire risk. This publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/estimating-the-prevalence-and-costs-of-external-wall-system-life-safety-fire-risk-in-mid-rise-residential-buildings-in-england.

The department has also published information on the remediation progress of high-rise (over 18 metres) residential and publicly-owned buildings with ACM cladding systems unlikely to meet Building Regulations is available in the Building Safety Programme data release.

For high-rise residential buildings with unsafe non-ACM cladding, the department is continuing to work with building owners to progress applications for the Building Safety Fund at pace so more remedial works can begin as swiftly as possible. Information on registrations to the Building Safety Fund can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remediation-of-non-acm-buildings#building-safety-fund-registrations-private-sector-and-social-sector.