Steve Day giving evidence to Public Bill Committee 12 Nov at 4pm

Join online (https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/ece55872-6d5b-404c-8976-efda5f7850fe) or observe from the public gallery at the Boothroyd Room Portcullis House 4pm 12/11/26.

How can two PAS 9980 fire assessments both be true?

At Royal Artillery Quays residents crowd funded a report to remove banned highly combustible XPS panels off their single protected escape stairs on 16 storey blocks of flats. The Euroclass E XPS panels are the second most highly combustible material to be put on buildings and are banned on new buildings.

Worryingly one PAS9980 fire assessment report says leave the XPS panels on the building without any fire performance test evidence to know the risk, whilst the other says they are dangerous and must be removed.

The building owner has chosen to choose the cheapest option and leave the XPS panels on the building condemning residents to safety worries and permanently high insurance. Particularly worrying with the increased risk of ebikes being stored in close proximity to the panels.

Fire Assessment Report 1 (XPS Panels can stay on) – https://lnkd.in/e-dW2CwT
Fire Assessment Report 2 (XPS Panels must come off) – https://lnkd.in/eFEzeztB

Residents are extremely worried about the retained highly combustible fire stair panels as their campaign video shows – https://www.gofundme.com/f/fund-raq-fire-report-to-get-highly-combustible-panels-off

PAS 9980 – The danger of it becoming law in the upcoming bill

• The forthcoming Remediation of Unsafe Cladding Bill will require all Fire Risk Appraisals of External Walls (FRAEW) to be carried out to the PAS 9980 standard. The previous standards, PAS 9980:22 has been replaced by a new standard PAS 9980:2026.

There are two key deficiencies in the new standard:

• First, it is inconsistent with the two-pronged regulatory regime. Strict compliance with building regulations ensures a baseline of fire safety while the Fire Safety Order allows responsible persons (buildings owners and managers) to manage fire safety on a risk-based basis, such as the commissioning of a FRAEW.

• The Fire Safety Order interacts with the Building Regulations 2010 (and other statutory requirements). Building regulations are intended to ensure buildings are constructed with adequate fire life safety measures. Enforcement under the Fire Safety Order is designed to presume that buildings initially met these standards at the time of construction or significant renovation. This is rooted in the principle of regulatory proportionality and the assumption of compliance with other statutory obligations unless evidence suggests otherwise. In general, regulators operate on the assumption that dutyholders comply with their legal obligations unless proven otherwise. This principle avoids duplication of enforcement efforts and unnecessary intervention. (Fire Service Policy and Operations – National Fire Chiefs Council Industry White Paper, paragraphs 5.14).

• The Fire Safety Order is therefore focused on fire safety management within occupied premises throughout their lifecycle. Remediation, by contrast, is about ensuring that a building is brought up to the standards that it should have always met. This distinction reflects the broader principle that each regulatory regime addresses specific stages of a building’s use and safety requirements. Building regulations ensure a baseline of safety, while the Fire Safety Order assumes this baseline has been met and shifts the responsibility to duty holders—such as building owners and managers—to maintain and manage fire safety proactively under a risk-based framework. (Fire Service Policy and Operations – National Fire Chiefs Council Industry White Paper, paragraphs 5.15).

• However, the new PAS 9980 states that “Persons conducting an FRAEW should adopt a risk-based approach. Failure of a building to meet the benchmarks given in building regulations and guidance applicable to external wall construction, both currently and at the time when the building was built, should not be used as the sole basis for determining the outcome of the FRAEW.” (PAS 9980:2026, paragraph 6.1).

• Can the Minister explain why the new PAS 9980 standard does not require the remediation of all failures to comply with building regulations in force at the time of construction?

• Why is the Government giving developers who failed to comply with building regulations a free pass?

• Second, the new standard does not provide certainty for leaseholders as it allows works needed to reduce a tolerable risk outcome to one of low to be delayed.

• Where an FRAEW concludes that the risk outcome is “tolerable”, it is not necessary to undertake remediation; however, consideration needs to be given to proportionate means by which the risk outcome can be reduced to “low”. This might involve immediate actions, such as remediating a small number of cavity barriers at locations that are particularly significant in terms of fire or smoke spreading to means of escape, but would not be expected to include wholesale remediation of cavity barriers. Longer-term actions to reduce risk also need to be considered, such as recommending that future planned preventative works incorporate specific actions to reduce risk; this might include recommending upgrading the performance of external wall components if/when there is any refurbishment of the external walls in future. (Commentary on Clause 7, page 35).

• Leaseholders will be left in partially safe buildings with elevated insurance costs. This approach also raises serious questions over the effectiveness of the Building Safety Act leaseholder protection from cladding costs. This protection only applies to unsafe cladding (Paragraph 8, Schedule 8, Building Safety Act 2022). If the components are deemed to pose a tolerable risk, are they unsafe even if their removal would reduce the risk to low? (N.B. developers cannot be asked to undertake or pay for subsequent work as the Developer Remediation Contract only requires them to make a building some to the tolerable standard).

Questions for the Minister:

• Can the Minister explain why the new PAS 9980 standard allows for multiple building remediations?

• Will the Minister use the forthcoming Remediation Bill to ensure that leaseholders are protected from the costs of any additional remediations?

• Will the Minister look again at the new PAS 9980 standard and consider including in the forthcoming Remediation Bill a requirement that all work needed to ensure a low risk outcome will be undertaken at the same time?

PAS9980:2026 – The reforms we are calling for:

1. Where a building has fire defects that are breaches of building regulations at the time of construction, then the home owner hasn’t been sold what they paid for and the defects must be remediated to current regulations as the builder broke the law.
2. Where a building has fire defects that weren’t unlawful at the time of construction, the defects must be remediated to an as low as reasonably practicable standard. Fire performance test evidence is required for any combustible material to be retained in a fire risk assessment.

PAS9980:2026 – The human cost of tolerating tragedy:

Building Safety (Planning & Infrastructure Bill)

We have proposed an amendment to the Planning & Infrastructure Bill that prevents members of the Responsible Actors Scheme (the UK’s largest developers from applying for planning permission or undertaking major development until the Secretary of State has revised the Scheme to ensure that all leaseholders are protected from building safety remediation costs. 

**Tabled by Baroness Pinnock, seconded by Earl of Lytton and backed by Gideon Amos MP**

Published Amendment text: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63132/documents/7216

———

After clause 51 insert the following new clause—

“Planning permission –Responsible Actors Scheme members

(1) No member of the Responsible Actors Scheme may be granted planningpermission or carry out major development of land in England through any agent orcontractor or any other person acting for or on their behalf until the Secretary of State has revised the Scheme to ensure that—

(a) all buildings with relevant defects are remediated at no cost to leaseholders orcommonhold unit owners, and

(b) where a relevant defect arises from a failure to comply with building regulations or relevant approved document in force at the time of construction that defect must be corrected by remediating the building to current building regulations.

(2) In this section—

“building” means a self-contained building, or self-contained part of a building, in England that contains at least two dwellings;

“major development” has the meaning given by article 2 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015;

“member of the Responsible Actors Scheme” means a member of the Scheme established under The Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) Regulations 2023;

“relevant defect” has the same means as section 120 of the Building Safety Act 2022.

Member’s Explanatory Statement

This new clause prevents members of the Responsible Actors Scheme (the UK’s large developers) from applying for or undertaking major development until the Secretary of State has revised the Scheme to ensure that all unsafe blocks of flats are remediated.

PAS 9980 – A watered-down unsafe, unsuitable and unwanted approach to fire safety

“We will prioritise residents and protect their interests, make sure that industry builds safe homes, and provide clear accountability and enforcement” said Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, as she announced the Government’s acceptance of all 58 recommendations in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final report.

What was missing from the statement was an acknowledgement of the quiet post-Grenfell watering down of fire safety protections for those currently living in what may well be unsafe buildings. Shocking as it may seem, the previous Conservative government and the current Labour one have adopted a Bourbon-like approach to ensuring fire safety in existing buildings—they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

72 people died on the night of 14 June 2017 because of lax standards that were inadequately enforced. Yet, inexplicably, governments of both parties have decided to repeat the errors of the past in the name of a more “proportionate” approach to remediation—or, more likely, to appease developers and limit the cost to the Exchequer.

PAS 9980

Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 9980 was introduced in January 2022 to replace previous guidance that the then Conservative government felt had “been wrongly interpreted by the industry as requiring remediation of all cladding irrespective of building height.” The new code of practice (PAS 9980 is a code of practice, not an official British Standard) aims “to help fire risk assessors take a proportionate approach to the assessment of walls and avoid wholescale cladding replacement where safe to do so.”

However, it is a well-kept secret that PAS 9980’s risk-based proportionate approach is flawed and not compatible with the fire safety regulatory regime and the “stay put” policy that applies to most residential buildings.

Fire safety regulatory regime

The fire safety regulatory regime is made up of two elements—building regulations and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Building regulations require buildings to be built with adequate fire safety measures and the fire safety order is concerned with fire safety management within occupied premises.

The two elements of the fire safety regulatory regime have different methods of ascertaining that their requirements have been met. Compliance with building regulations ensures a baseline of fire safety, while the Fire Safety Order requires responsible persons (building owners and managers) to manage fire safety on a risk-based basis.

PAS 9980 is incompatible with the fire safety regime because its risk-based approach ignores the fundamental assumption of building regulation compliance in the fire safety regime. It is essential to the safety of residents and firefighters that buildings and fires within them behave as designed or expected.

However, PAS 9980, as its drafters have acknowledged, does not consider building regulation compliance as a benchmark of acceptable risk. Instead, it accepts heightened risk arising from non-compliance with statutory guidance or building regulations and, despite an assessment process that “will inevitably be, to a large degree, subjective,” takes the view that the risk might still be low enough to be tolerable.

The substitution of a risk-based approach in place of ensuring building regulation compliance complicates firefighting and undermines the assumptions underpinning the “stay put” strategy that governs the design and construction of most blocks of flats. Residents and firefighters are placed at a higher risk of death or injury than would otherwise be the case as the London Fire Brigade has pointed out:

Firefighting operations are underpinned by key assumptions about building design and how they will behave in a fire. When dangerous and often hidden conditions exist due to failures of design, build and maintenance the effectiveness of the operational response will be seriously undermined and the safety of members of the public and firefighters could be severely compromised.

PAS 9980’s building-specific and subjective assessment of risk and remediation requirements removes the certainty previously provided to firefighters through building regulation compliance that a building would behave as expected in the event of fire.

Its risk-based approach is incompatible with the “stay put” strategy. Lord Khan of Burnley, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, recently reiterated the importance of building regulation compliance as an essential prerequisite for a “stay put” policy.

On the “stay put” strategy, which I have mentioned before, that depends upon buildings being properly constructed, refurbished and maintained to building safety regulations.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry concluded that “A stay put strategy in response to a compartment fire will be acceptable only if there is negligible [emphasis added] risk of fire escaping into a spreading through the internal wall.” PAS 9980 takes the view that the less stringent assessment of a tolerable risk is acceptable.

Ironically, PAS 9980 itself makes clear that it should not be used when residents rightly expect their building to comply with building regulations in force at the time of construction—not a subjective risk assessment—or where policies or strategies assume that buildings will behave as expected in the event of fire.

For some stakeholders, there is no appetite to consider a risk‑based approach and, for these stakeholders, the only satisfactory outcome is certainty in the performance of external walls in fire, with zero risk to life as the principal objective. The methodology in this PAS cannot be applied when such a view prevails.

FTT rejects PAS9980 ‘tolerable’ risk standard

The FTT also resisted the submission that a “building safety risk” will only exist where a PAS 9980 assessment has identified a fire risk that is not considered to be “tolerable”.  The FTT opined that a better view was that:

“any risk above “low” risk (understood as the ordinary unavoidable fire risks in residential buildings and/or in relation to PAS 9980 as an assessment that fire spread would be within normal expectations) may be a building safety risk.  Section 120(5) describes a risk to the safety of people arising from the spread of fire or collapse, not a risk reaching an intolerable or any other particular threshold. We do not think “collapse” indicates the risk must be of catastrophic fire spread, as was suggested. It need only be a risk to the safety of people arising from the spread of fire in a tall residential building”.

https://www.4pumpcourt.com/the-ftts-approach-under-bsa-2022-section-124-defects-building-safety-risk-and-just-and-equitable

PAS 9980 revision

It is disappointing that successive housing secretaries have manoeuvred quietly to water down fire safety standards for the hundreds of thousands of residents living in blocks of flats that might not comply with building regulations in force at the time of construction.

However, all is not lost, as there is the opportunity to easily and speedily remedy PAS 9980’s flaws through its forthcoming revision.

The revised standard should require the removal of all combustible material on all buildings over 18m. Combustible material was only permitted on high-rise buildings for the short period 2000-2006 and should be removed.

It should also require PAS 9980 assessors to specifically assess compliance with building regulations in force at the time of construction as the first step in any assessment. Any additional fire risks can then be dealt with under a risk-based approach.

Details of the PAS 9980 revision project can be found at https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup.com/projects/2024-00624#/section

Two ways to protect ALL leaseholders from ruinous building safety remediation costs

The Earl of Lytton addressed the House of Lords on 01 May 2024 giving the government two options to resolve the chaos in the UK flat market caused by the flawed Building Safety Act. It provides full funding from the construction industry to protect all 1.7 million excluded leaseholders, removes the permanently high insurance risk due to the sub standard developer contracts and removes the three tier market causing conveyancers to refuse work on mid and high rise blocks of flats. It offers true consumer protection for blocks of flats with no excluded leaseholders for both historic defects and defects found going forward and it achieves this without the need to go through the courts.

Building Safety Address to the Lords – 01 May 2024

Hansard Speech Text – How the amendments work

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2024-05-01/debates/C52664BB-18D9-4B35-BDB8-35FB205D7A73/LeaseholdAndFreeholdReformBill#contribution-11618833-AB59-4D49-88BE-C1ECA700DAB8

Hansard Speech Text – Reply to minister

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2024-05-01/debates/C52664BB-18D9-4B35-BDB8-35FB205D7A73/LeaseholdAndFreeholdReformBill#contribution-9E847340-D2DA-4021-A0E6-E368673F858C

NRLA renews backing for Earl of Lytton’s building safety scheme

Grateful to the National Residential Landlords Association for renewing their backing for the Earl of Lytton’s Building Safety Remediation Scheme tabled in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.

They write:

“A key change that the NRLA is seeking to achieve concerns building safety. The Earl of Lytton has re-tabled his amendment to introduce a Building Safety Remediation Scheme which would ensure that building safety failures are fixed, irrespective of a building’s ownership or height.  

The scheme would overcome the shortcomings of the Building Safety Act (and mitigate the issues linked to any ground ban) to fix historic safety defects via grants funded either by the developer responsible for the building works or through a levy on the construction industry where the developer is dissolved or insolvent.“

An investigation by The Sunday Times found that since the Grenfell Fire of 2017 more than 15,000 residents have been forced to leave homes due to fire or fire safety defects. The Earl’s amendments are needed now as a matter of urgency.

Full article here: https://www.nrla.org.uk/news/here-today-not-to-stay-copy

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

The Earl of Lytton has tabled a set of amendments to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill aimed at protecting all leaseholders from building safety remediation costs, ending service charge abuses in leasehold and introducing the concept of a building trustee to improve leasehold and ensure the transition to enfranchisement and commonhold works in practice.

Currently 1.7 million leaseholders are excluded by the Building Safety Act leaseholder protections and are liable to pay all costs of fixing building safety defects if found in their blocks of flats. We believe these innocent homeowners and also the taxpayer should not have to bail out the construction industry for bad practice. However the required extra funding has got to come from somewhere. We say the money has to come from the industry that built the defective buildings in the first place, the construction industry.

Other issues introduced by the Building Safety Act include:

• stalling conveyancing by creating a three tier flat market and needless complixity
• substandard developer contracts condemning some leaseholders to permanently high insurance
• disregarding freeholder insolvency risk (by recent group rent cap proposals) putting the leaseholder protections under the Building Safety Act also at risk and leaving leaseholders in limbo
• ignoring the flawed PAS9980 remediation standard that is being rejected by insurers and is a code of practice that doesn’t require building regulation breaches at the time of construction to be addressed.
• ignoring the need for consumer protection against Building Safety defects without the need of going through the courts.

BUILDING TRUSTEE AMENDMENTS
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/55186/documents/4737
Amendments : 82C, 82D, 82E, 82F, 82G, 82H, 82I, 82J, 82K, 82L, 82M

Watch House of Lords video here : https://buildingsafetyscheme.org/building-trustee-amendments

The building trustee would be appointed for higher-risk buildings and large mixed-use developments. He or she would be an impartial figure whose role would be to ensure that the interests, rights, responsibilities of the landlord (if any) and leaseholders are balanced and, more importantly, that the building is properly maintained and the service charge provides value for money. In this way, the concerns raised in relation to leaseholder management of larger mixed use estates can be mitigated.

In the event of insolvency of the landlord, the building trustee would step in to ensure the ongoing management of the building. Provision is made in the relevant amendment to prevent the termination of service contracts or insurance policies if a landlord becomes insolvent.

SERVICE CHARGE AMENDMENTS
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/55186/documents/4737
Amendments: 78C, 78D, 78E, 78F, 78G, 78H, 80A, 80B

Watch Video of Lords speech here: https://buildingsafetyscheme.org/service-charge-amendments

This group of amendments are wholly in line with existing provisions in the Bill to increase the transparency of costs passed on to leaseholders and to protect them from exploitative behaviour by landlords.

In this group there are amendments to:

• define when a landlord incurs costs to prevent manipulation of the 18 month rule under which costs incurred before then cannot be charged unless leaseholders have been given notice;
• a new tighter test of “value for money” to replace current test of “reasonably incurred” in relation to service charge costs;
• go further than the Government on the automatic provision of information to leaseholders;
• prevent landlords from placing contracts with related parties or connected persons;
• limit the duration of contracts that a landlord may enter into;
• provide a definition of “cosmetic works” that may be undertaken without the consent of a landlord, and
• measures to prevent the assignment or payment of insurance payouts by landlords to third parties, such as their lenders or bondholders.

These amendments are consistent with the overarching aims of consumer protection in leasehold matters and which would be applicable whatever form of legal construct emerges as between block control and management and unit ownership and occupation.

BUILDING SAFETY REMEDIATION SCHEME AMENDMENTS
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/55221/documents/4744 (Starts on page 34)
Amendments : 93B, 107

Watch House of Lords video here : https://buildingsafetyscheme.org/two-ways-to-protect-all-leaseholders-from-ruinous-building-safety-remediation-costs

The Building Safety Remediation Scheme (BSRS) envisaged under the amendment establishes a statutory scheme that covers all leaseholders. If a building did not comply with regulations in force at the time of construction, joint and several liability for remediation of all material building safety defects is placed on the developer and principal contractor. If neither are able to pay (or the building met the relevant regulations in force at the time of construction but is now, with later information, seen as unsafe), remediation funding would come from a levy on the construction industry rather than just developers as is currently proposed.

The BSRS provides leaseholders and their lenders with certainty that their homes will be fully remediated. But it does not just deal with the present crisis as it enshrines in law a low-cost mechanism to deal with similar situations in the future. With the Government, rightly, encouraging leaseholders to take greater control over the management of their buildings and seeking to reinvigorate commonhold, the BSRS provides a necessary layer of protection as the Building Safety Act, 2022 specifically excludes enfranchised leaseholders and commonhold unit owners from all its protections.

More on the BSRS here: https://buildingsafetyscheme.org/6th-anniversary-of-grenfell-6th-tabling-of-a-consumer-protection-amendment-for-buildings/

BUILDING SAFETY ACT LEASEHOLDER PROTECTION AMENDMENTS
https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/55238/documents/4749 (starts on page 3)

Watch House of Lords video here : https://buildingsafetyscheme.org/two-ways-to-protect-all-leaseholders-from-ruinous-building-safety-remediation-costs

An alternative to the Building Safety Remediation Scheme to give the government another way of protecting all leaseholders. 

1) Removes leaseholder exclusions and protects ALL leaseholders from building safety remediation costs with funding from a construction industry levy. 

2) Fix the flawed developer remediation contracts to cover all building safety defects and not just life safety critical, so no one is condemned to permanently high insurance due to the remediations not eliminating all building safety risks.

DEBATE TIMINGS

Due for debate week commencing 29/01/2024 (Monday and Wednesday) at Committee.

Trusthold and Service Charge Amendments Tabled

The Earl of Lytton has tabled amendments to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill to end service charge abuse, prevent insurance assignments and introduce the concept of a Building Trustee to ensure leasehold abuse ends and commonhold thrives.

Legal clauses here : https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/55186/documents/4737

BUILDING TRUSTEE AMENDMENTS

The building trustee concept is designed as a backstop in relation to the expansion of enfranchisement rights in the Bill and the possibility of the insolvency of a major landlord group.

The government assumes good management will automatically follow enfranchisement or resident management. Leaseholders are not necessarily equipped to direct the management of their blocks especially those with up to 50% non-residential floorspace.

The Government is yet to announce its proposals to abolish or restrict ground rent. However, if recent press speculation is correct then, as you can see from the following table, a 20-year rundown period runs the risk of some of the UK’s largest landlord groups becoming insolvent as their liabilities extend well beyond that period.

The building trustee would be appointed for higher-risk buildings and large mixed-use developments. He or she would be an impartial figure whose role would be to ensure that the interests, rights, responsibilities of the landlord (if any) and leaseholders are balanced and, more importantly that the building is properly maintained and the service charge provides value for money. In this way, the concerns raised in relation to leaseholder management of larger mixed use estates can be mitigated.

In the event of insolvency of the landlord, the building trustee would step in to ensure the ongoing management of the building. Provision is made in the relevant amendment to prevent the termination of service contracts or insurance policies if a landlord becomes insolvent.

SERVICE CHARGE AMENDMENTS

This group of amendments are wholly in line with existing provisions in the Bill to increase the transparency of costs passed on to leaseholders and to protect them from exploitative behaviour by landlords.

In this group there are amendments to:

• define when a landlord incurs costs to prevent manipulation of the 18 month rule under which costs incurred before then cannot be charged unless leaseholders have been given notice;
• a new tighter test of “value for money” to replace current test of “reasonably incurred” in relation to service charge costs;
• go further than the Government on the automatic provision of information to leaseholders;
• prevent landlords from placing contracts with related parties or connected persons;
• limit the duration of contracts that a landlord may enter into;
• provide a definition of “cosmetic works” that may be undertaken without the consent of a landlord, and
• measures to prevent the assignment or payment of insurance payouts by landlords to third parties, such as their lenders or bondholders.

These amendments are consistent with the overarching aims of consumer protection in leasehold matters and which would be applicable whatever form of legal construct emerges as between block control and management and unit ownership and occupation.

Lord Lytton addresses the House of Lords

The case for consumer protection for building safety defects (fire safety and structural) as well as against leasehold abuse is made by the Earl of Lytton to the House of Lords at the Second Reading of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, Wed 27 March, 2024.

Amendments coming soon to the House of Lords for Grand Committee.

Consumer Protection for flats needed in 2024

Former parliamentary counsel Daniel Greenberg CB drafted the Polluter Pays clauses of the Earl of Lytton’s consumer protection legislation, before he took on his new role as current Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. The scheme is also backed by Grenfell inquiry construction lawyer David Sawtell as well as many other experts and organisations.

In 2021, Daniel describes at a conference in parliament, how effective the scheme will be at making builders and lead developers pay for Building Safety defects without the need of taking them to court.

The scheme clauses referred to in the video below are available here: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/52302/documents/3823

The scheme delivers the following badly needed remedies to the flawed Building Safety Act and is urgently needed in 2024:

1. Protects the 1.7 million excluded leaseholders with remediation costs funded by the construction industry.

2. Removes the 3 tiers of ‘protection’ status (needlessly introduced by the Building Safety Act) blighting the UK flat market and causing conveyancers to reject this work due to lack of insurance cover.

3. Ensures the construction industry is the backstop for remediation costs, as many of the landlords are thinly capitalised so making them the backstop could result in many qualifying leaseholders being left in legal limbo due to freeholder insolvency. Freeholder insolvency is increasingly likely in 2024 as indicated in the government’s own impact assessment on ground rent caps.

4. Ensures that the rotten culture in construction ends with permanent joint and several liability on the developer or lead contractor or their parent companies. True consumer protection for blocks of flats. No need to take a party to court to get justice.

5. Removes the risk of more expensive mortgages due to extra capital being required under the new Basel 3.1 standards for dealing with permanently impaired mortgage securities blighted by building safety defects with no complete route to funding.

Over 62,000 people demand Earl of Lytton’s Scheme to become law

Over 62,000 people are now calling for consumer protection for blocks of flats (without the need to go to court) with the Earl of Lytton’s buildingsafetyscheme.org legislation.

With the Building Safety Act, 2022 freeholder leaseholder protections back stop now at serious risk of freeholder insolvencies with recent legislative proposals, even qualifying leaseholders could find a lack of funding available to cover ruinous remediation costs. Then of course there is the 1.7 million unqualified leaseholders who are still at risk. All because the government hasn’t got enough money.

Please sign the petition here : https://www.change.org/p/protect-innocent-homeowners-hold-property-developers-to-account-for-dangerous-cladding

All leaseholders can be protected from historic building safety remediation costs with this legislation and it doesn’t ask for a tax payer bailout.