The Government has published a Call for Evidence for Leaseholder-owned buildings over 11m or five storeys high with relevant defects, which can be accessed here. This Call for Evidence is to consider how to protect leaseholders currently not protected against the costs of remedial works.
The Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) brought in profound changes to the landscape of service charge recovery in relation to fire safety related defects in buildings over 11m or five storeys in height. Those provisions include specific protections for leaseholders in such buildings from the costs of remediating their buildings and contributing to the costs of such where there are ‘relevant defects’ in certain circumstances. A ‘relevant defect’ is a defect incurred during the building’s construction, or because of works carried out to it, within the last 30 years and which has impacted on the fire or structural safety of the building.
Currently the leaseholder protection provisions in Part 5 of the Building Safety Act 2022 do not apply to leaseholder-owned and commonhold buildings. This is due to the fact that those leaseholders, in those specific circumstances, would still have had to pay to remedy the safety defects in their buildings.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has published a Call for Evidence asking for information on leaseholder-owned buildings above 11 metres or five storeys with “relevant defects”. The evidence gathered will help inform Government policy so it can be decided how best to protect the leaseholders in these scenarios from the impact of the costs of remedying defects of a fire safety or structural nature.
The deadline to respond (by e-mail or online form) is 14 November 2022.
Please contact Lee Russell or Mark Foxcroft if you would like further information.
