Mar

CLADDING: Charging smaller landlords for remediation is ‘wrong’, MPs tell government

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A cross-party group of MPs has demanded that the government look again at excluding scores of landlords from accessing cladding remediation funds.

The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee disagrees with the government that only buy-to-let landlords with one other property should be included in statutory protections for leaseholders, arguing that there are other options to exclude wealthy property tycoons without making smaller landlords liable.

Its Building Safety: Remediation and Funding report warns that too many leaseholders will fall through the cracks of the government’s “piecemeal measures” to protect them from the costs of building safety remediation.

It wants the proposed cap on non-cladding costs for leaseholders scrapped, as well as a comprehensive building safety fund to cover the costs of remediating all building safety defects on any buildings of any height where the original ‘polluter’ cannot be traced.

Committee chair Clive Betts (pictured) says the government needs to stop pitting the building safety crisis against the housing crisis.

“Leaseholders should not be paying a penny to rectify faults not of their doing in order to make their homes safe,” he says.

“We recommend the government identify all relevant parties who played a role in this crisis…and legally require them to pay towards fixing individual faults and ensure that they also contribute to collective funding for building safety remediation.”

Timothy Douglas (pictured), head of policy and campaigns for Propertymark, says the government now needs to reject the assumption that all landlords are ‘wealthy tycoons’.

He adds: “Our member letting agents who work closely with landlords are clear in their message to us that many are extremely concerned about the huge financial hardship they are facing.

“The Secretary of State has repeatedly said that those who are not responsible for this crisis should not have to pay, so we urge him to act on that principle and take away the uncertainty by accepting the recommendations in the committee’s report without delay.”

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