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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the number of approved Building Safety Fund applications whose construction costs have risen since the initial tender was completed, and if he will take steps to approve the cost variation.

Applicants can only submit a full costs application to the Building Safety Fund once they have gone out to tender and have a preferred contractor to carry out the remediation works. At that point they must provide the required cost breakdown and their application will be assessed by the Department. If costs are assessed as acceptable an award of funding and grant funding agreement is issued. Applicants will also enter into a works contract with the main contractor, based on the costs agreed at tender from the contractor. We expect the works to start on site as soon as practically possible once contracts are signed.

Applicants to the Building Safety Fund are then required to manage the total eligible costs of remediation project within the grant awarded. We appreciate that circumstances can change and costs may increase because of unforeseen overruns or variations to contract scope. Where this happens applicants can submit an application for variations which will be considered by the Department. However, where construction contracts vary in the placement of liability in relation to variations and cost variation applications to the Building Safety Fund will only be permitted if the liability for the variation is the applicant's and not the contractor's. Guidance on variations under the Building Safety Fund can be found in the Building Safety Fund Application Guidance on gov.uk [at www.gov.uk/guidance/remediation-of-non-acm-buildings and www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-safety-fund-guidance-for-new-applications-2022 ].

The Department appoints cost consultants for the Building Safety Fund. They undertake additional monitoring of tenders and variation requests including to identify where costs are rising as a result of inflation. The Department is actively seeking to better monitor the overall impact of inflation, including on the Building Safety Fund.