MPs voted on Wednesday not to include any buildings below 11 metres in height in the Building Safety Bill’s provisions protecting leaseholders from liability for the cost of cladding remediation.
The House of Lords aimed to clarify what constituted a “relevant building” to which leaseholder protections would apply. They proposed that this would include any self-contained building, or any self-contained part of a building, that includes two or more dwellings.
However, MPs amended this proposal to only apply to buildings over 11 metres or five storeys in height, with 318 MPs voting in favour of the government’s update.
The minister of state for housing, Stuart Andrew MP, explained the move in Parliament on Wednesday:
“The department is aware of a handful of low-rise buildings where freeholders have been commissioning such works and we are addressing such buildings on a case-by-case basis, but we must restore proportionality to the system.
There is no systematic risk of fire with buildings below 11 metres. Low-rise buildings are therefore unlikely to need costly remediation to make them safe. Lower-cost mitigations such as fire alarms are likely to be far more appropriate and proportionate.”
Andrew was asked by Stephen Doughty MP what advice and protection would be available for those leaseholders who have already been charged for remediation. Andrew said:
“Freeholders and landlords should not be commissioning costly remediation in buildings below 11 metres except in exceptional circumstances, which is where there is no more proportionate option available. They certainly should not be pointing to old EWS assessments to justify those costs.
Given the small number of buildings involved, a blanket legislative intervention bringing hundreds of thousands more buildings into scope to deal with an issue affecting just a handful of buildings would be entirely disproportionate.”
The Commons also rejected a proposal of the Lords to require the Building Safety Regulator to conduct safety reviews of buildings within two years of the Bill coming into force and publish their findings. This was changed to three years by MPs. The Bill is set to return to the Lords on Tuesday 26th April.
