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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to prevent developers from deliberately delaying defect rectification until after the statutory liability period has expired.

The Building Safety Act ensures that those who built defective buildings take responsibility for remedying them.

The Building Safety Act extended the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972, which imposes a duty on a person providing a dwelling to see that the dwelling is fit for habitation from 6 to 30 years retrospectively and from 6 to 15 years prospectively.

The Building Safety Act also includes a robust package of measures designed to ensure that those responsible for relevant defects in relevant buildings fix them. Where remediation is needed and not progressing due to the building owner’s inaction, remediation orders can be issued to compel a building owner to fix their building.

Regarding the costs of inaction, the Building Safety Act also includes remediation contribution orders, new tools that allow interested persons, including leaseholders, to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for an order requiring building owners to pay to fix unsafe buildings. A remediation contribution order can be used to require a landlord (or other specified body corporate or partnership) to make payments for the purpose of meeting costs already incurred (or to be incurred) in remedying relevant defects (or specified relevant defects) relating to the relevant building.