Housing Secretary Michael Gove has written to firms, giving them until March to agree on a plan to protect leaseholders trapped in “unsellable homes”.
So far, residents in blocks 11-18m high have been ineligible for government support to remove unsafe cladding.
Now Gove is looking to housebuilders to shoulder the costs of fixing fire-safety issues on tens of thousands of properties in England. And he had warned that developers will face the prospect of legal action if they do not.
Gove said some companies had shown leadership and covered the costs but others “had not shouldered their responsibilities.”
“It is neither fair nor decent that innocent leaseholders, many of whom have worked hard and made sacrifices to get a foot on the housing ladder, should be landed with bills they cannot afford to fix problems they did not cause,” he said in a letter to developers.
“For too many of the people living in properties your industry has built in recent years, their home has become a source of misery.”
Gove is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons later on Monday.
Mary-Anne Bowring, group managing director at Ringley, said: “Leaseholders affected by the cladding crisis living in buildings between 11 and 18m have long been taken for granted in the Government’s approach to fire safety remediation. The announcement today is vindication for thousands facing astronomical costs that come with replacing unsafe cladding.
“Those imprisoned by these costs still face an uphill struggle as funding will only cover cladding replacement when new legislation mandates much more substantial changes to meet fire safety compliance which come at a steep cost.
“We ought to also question how this funding will be secured, the accessibility of grants, and the transparency of a system which transfers responsibility from the true culprits who were largely wound down and disappeared post-Grenfell, to developers more broadly who face a blanket tax for the failure of a few.”
Cllr David Renard, housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, which represents 350 councils across England and Wales, added: “No leaseholder should have to pay the costs of making their homes safe and the Secretary of State’s threat to use the legal system to ensure developers meet their responsibilities to leaseholders is a positive step in the right direction. However, leaseholders are not the only innocent victims of the construction industry’s failure to build safe homes.
“The construction industry must also be made to fix the fire safety defects it has built into blocks owned by councils and housing associations. Unless the Government forces the industry to act – or provides funding – we are concerned that the costs of fixing social housing blocks will fall on council housing revenue accounts and housing associations.
“This will reduce the funding available to meet the Government’s ambitions for improvements to social housing, net zero and the provision of new social housing, leaving tenants and those on the waiting list to suffer the consequences of decades of industry failure and poor regulation. Like leaseholders, council tenants and those on the waiting list are innocent victims and the Government needs to help them too.”
