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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to protect customers of construction companies who do not meet their safety obligations.

Under the Building Safety Act 2022, those responsible for creating historical safety defects will bear the burden of costs for remediation and will be held accountable. Before attempting to pass on costs for historical safety remediation to leaseholders, landlords should consider whether any monies can be obtained from third parties in connection with the undertaking of the remediation work and, if so, to pursue this.

To enable them to pursue those responsible for defective work, we have brought forward an ambitious toolkit of measures through the Act. Civil claims can be brought against manufacturers of, or those who have supplied, defective or mis-sold construction products, or those supplied or marketed in breach of regulations, where these products have been incorporated in a dwelling and that has caused or contributed to a dwelling being unfit for habitation. This provision, which applies to all dwellings, has retrospective effect for cladding products with a limitation period of 30 years and prospective effect for all construction products with a limitation period of 15 years.

The Act also retrospectively extend the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 from 6 to 30 years and our extension of the reach of civil liability to associated companies of developers, including trusts, to ensure that some of the largest businesses in the sector who have used shell companies and other complex corporate structures can be pursued for contributions towards the remediation of historical safety defects. These provisions will help to ensure that all parties that play a part in creating building safety defects are in line for costs to rectify them.

Where it is not possible to identify those directly responsible for historical safety defects, the leaseholder protections spread the costs of decades of malpractice equitably across the system. The leaseholder protections in the Act mean that building owners and landlords must fix historical safety defects in their buildings above 11m or 5 storeys where they are, or are connected to, the developer. Qualifying leaseholders are protected from all cladding remediation costs, and those whose landlord group has a net worth of more than £2 million per relevant building or whose property is valued at below £325,000 in Greater London, or £175,000 elsewhere in England, are also protected from non-cladding and interim measure costs (including waking watch). Any contribution that is required from qualifying leaseholders for non-cladding remediation and interim measures is firmly capped and spread over 10 years, with costs already paid since 28 June 2017 counting towards the cap.