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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to increase the proportion of developers that have signed up to the Government's building safety repair pledge.

The Government is clear that developers must take responsibility for buildings with which they are associated. As of 8 July, 48 developers have signed a pledge to undertake all necessary life-critical fire safety work on 11m+ buildings they had a role in developing or refurbishing over the past thirty years. Those pledges are being converted into legally binding contractual commitments. The department published the draft contract on 13 July

In parallel, the department continues to reach out to companies that were not involved in initial negotiations, inviting them to make similar commitments.

The Government intends to establish a statutory Responsible Actors Scheme that eligible developers who do the right thing will be permitted to join. Eligible developers who are not members of the scheme may face significant commercial consequences. We will also use our recovery strategy unit and new powers in the Building Safety Act to pursue companies who fail to do the right thing.