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

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what provisions there are within the Building Safety Act 2022 to hold cladding remediation companies who installed defective and unsafe cladding to account.

We have brought forward an ambitious toolkit of measures under the Building Safety Act 2022, which enables those responsible for defective work to be pursued. Civil claims can now be brought against manufacturers of, or those who have supplied, defective or mis-sold construction products, or those who have 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 retrospectively extends the limitation period under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 from six to 30 years and extends the reach of civil liability to associated companies of developers, including trusts, to ensure that those 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.

The Act gives the Secretary of State the power to establish a statutory scheme to distinguish between industry actors that have committed to take responsibility for making buildings safe, including by remedying defective buildings, and those that fail to do so. The Act also gives the Secretary of State powers to prevent those that have failed to take responsibility from carrying out development for which planning permission has been granted, and to prevent them from receiving building control approval on their developments. This means that those that take responsibility and do the right thing can continue to go about their business freely and with confidence, while those that don't may suffer commercial and reputational consequences.

Additionally, anti-avoidance and enforcement provisions - including remediation orders and remediation contributions orders - are included in the Act to ensure that those who are liable to pay under leaseholder protections actually do so. Relevant authorities now have the power to compel responsible entities to fund and undertake the necessary remediation work. Where firms are repeatedly refusing to pay to fix these buildings, the government's new Recovery Strategy Unit will pursue these firms, working closely with other enforcement authorities.