Thank you to the many constituents who have recently got in touch regarding the Fire Safety Bill and amendments.
It is important to highlight the comprehensive response to remediating unsafe cladding and protecting leaseholders from unaffordable costs. The intervention from the government is based on independent advice and prioritises public safety and providing fairness both to leaseholders and the broader taxpayer, many of whom are not home-owners themselves.
The
government is removing unsafe cladding, supporting leaseholders, restoring
confidence to this part of the housing market and taking action to ensure a
situation like the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower never arises again.
The government
has 5 areas to offer reassurance to homeowners and confidence to the
housing market.
1 - Government
will pay for the removal of unsafe cladding for leaseholders in all residential
buildings over 18 metres (six storeys) in England
The
government have committed an unprecedented £5 billion investment in
building safety, including the £3.5 billion announced recently. This will
ensure taxpayer funding is targeted at the highest risk buildings in line with
longstanding independent expert advice.
2
- Generous finance scheme to provide reassurance for leaseholders in buildings
between 11 and 18 metres (four to six storeys), ensuring they never pay more
than £50 a month for cladding removal
Lower-rise
buildings, with a lower risk to safety, will gain new protection from the costs
of cladding removal through a generous new scheme. This will pay for cladding
removal – where it is needed – through a long-term, low interest,
government-backed financing arrangement. Under the scheme, no leaseholder will
pay more than £50 a month towards the removal of unsafe cladding.
3 - An
industry levy and tax to ensure developers play their part
The
government aims to introduce a developer levy targeting developers seeking
permission to develop certain high-rise buildings in England. In addition, a
new tax will be introduced for the UK residential property development sector.
This will raise at least £2 billion over a decade to help pay for cladding
remediation costs. This will ensure that the largest property developers make a
fair contribution to the remediation programme.
These
new taxes and levies in no way absolve building owners, builders, construction
products manufacturers, warranty providers or insurers from paying for their
failures. The government strongly urge them to do
so and are pleased some have and are supporting further efforts to
bring this about.
4 - A
world-class new safety regime to ensure a tragedy like Grenfell never happens
again
The
government will protect lower future generations from similar mistakes by
bringing forward legislation, including the landmark Building Safety and Fire
Safety Bills, this year to tighten the regulation of buildings safety and to
review the construction products regime to prevent malpractice arising again.
This builds on steps we have already taken to establish a world class regime
such as setting up new
construction products and
building safety regulators.
5 - Providing
confidence to this part of the housing market
These
measures will boost the housing market and free up more homeowners to once
again buy and sell their properties. This boost will be backed up by the
introduction of new Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors guidance, to be
published in March, which will make clearer the circumstances in which an EWS1
is required – freeing hundreds of thousands of leaseholders from the process.
Taken
together, this exceptional intervention amounts to the largest ever Government
investment in building safety. The government believes in
homeownership and are firmly supporting the hundreds of thousands of homeowners
who need this help now.
Moving on to the amendments which I did not support – Parliamentarians have a duty to implement a clear
framework and transparent legislation to support fire and building safety
reform.
Despite the best intentions of the Lords amendments, they are unworkable and
impractical. They would make the legislation less clear, and they do not
reflect the complexity involved in apportioning liability for remedial defects.
These amendments would also
require extensive redrafting
of primary legislation, resulting in delays to the commencement of the Fire
Safety Bill and to our overall programme. They could also have unintended
and possibly perverse consequences for those that the amendments are intended
to support, and we would still be no further forward in resolving these issues.
Despite the best intentions
of those who have tabled the amendments, they are unworkable and impractical. The
amendment does not take into account remedial works that arise outside of the
fire risk assessment process—for example, costs identified as a result of a
safety incident or building works taking place. In such cases, this will not
prevent costs being passed on, so it does not deliver what Members want it to
do.
Furthermore, if these
amendments were to be added to the Bill and become law without the necessary
redrafting of the legislation, the government, and thereby the
taxpayer, would in all likelihood fall liable to protracted action by building
owners in the courts. Building owners could use litigation to claim for costs
that they feel are entitled to be pursued from leaseholders. While that
litigation is ongoing, there could be further delays to construction work
carried out on urgent remediation. It could be a waste of time and a waste of
taxpayers’ money. Redrafting the Bill is not something that can be done at the
stroke of a pen. It requires parliamentary counsel and parliamentary draftsmen
to work at it to ensure that any changes are sound and that any secondary
legislation is also prepared, so that the government, and thereby the
taxpayer, can avoid legal challenge. We would not be able to get it done in
this Session.
Furthermore, the amendments
do not reflect the complexity involved in apportioning liability for remedial
defects. The government have announced how they
will distribute costs, including from developers and industry, through the upcoming
levy and tax. A decision through this amendment to pass all these costs to the
building owner would be overly simplistic and it could be counter-productive.
It would be self-defeating if landlords, faced with remediation costs, simply
walked away. Many could do that. They could activate an insolvency procedure
and just walk away. That is not about protecting freeholders, but about
protecting leaseholders. It is about their position, because if leaseholders
are left behind as the owners walk away, they would be in the same position as
they are now, with no certainty on how works would be paid for or when they
will be done. There is a real risk that this amendment could make the problem
worse for leaseholders. We would be left in a situation where there would be
delays to the commencement of the Fire Safety Bill, delays to our wider
building safety programme, greater uncertainty for
leaseholders and, quite possibly, unintended and deleterious consequences for
them. We would not be any further forward in resolving the issue.
There has been a lot of work to ensure that those with broader
shoulders and those that should pay do pay. That is why the Chancellor
announced at the Budget that there will be a levy on tall buildings and a tax
on the sector. We do not want to absolve the industry of its responsibility. The government is finalising how the levy will be
calculated and the Treasury is leading on the development of the tax. Of course, it should work effectively, and that small
and medium-sized developers are not unfairly disadvantaged. We want to get it
right and we want to get it done as quickly as we can.
I am also pleased that we are now seeing
developers step forward in this effort by putting aside significant funding:
Taylor Wimpey has put aside £125 million of funds to de-clad the buildings
for which it is responsible; and, Persimmon has put aside £75 million, and has
committed to pay all ACM and non-ACM remediation and inherent defects in the
buildings for which it is responsible. The sector is now stepping forward, and the government is encouraging more developers to do so.
We will bring forward as soon as we possibly can the workings of the financial
support scheme that were announced at the Budget
that will ensure that leaseholders in buildings below 18 metres pay no more than £50 a
month.
If you would like to discuss
this further or any other matter, then please do not hesitate to contact me.
No comments:
Post a Comment