The Home Builders Federation has published its full response to the Government’s building safety inquiry.
The HBF points out its members have consistently maintained that leaseholders should not be left to fund remediation programmes that have been made necessary as a result of failures of building regulations, building safety defects or failures of building products and materials.
It acknowledges that home builders have a role to play in fixing the safety issues and will endeavour to continue working constructively with the government to this end. HBF members have “committed to work with the government in efforts to find a solution since the first weeks after the Grenfell Tower fire” and the organisation said it had maintained throughout that affected leaseholders and residents should not have to pay for such works simply because the building regulations at the time were inadequate.
In the weeks and months that followed the Grenfell Tower fire, HBF said its members were among the first companies to voluntarily commit to removing Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding from their high-rise buildings and then, when the ACM fund was initiated, to maintain that direct, voluntary funding. HBF and its members proposed a levy on building control back in early 2018 to raise funds to support remediation where the original developer was absent.
The full response to the inquiry can be found here. In conclusion, the HNF states: “The industry is committed to continue working to agree a fair and proportionate arrangement with the government and all the other parties involved to remove the burdens on leaseholders.
“UK home builders have made considerable commitments to remediate buildings and are already making a significant contribution to the Government’s work in this area via the new RPDT which is estimated to raise £3bn, and the forthcoming Building Safety Levy. In 2018, via HBF, home builders put forward a proposal to raise hundreds of millions of pounds per year to help remediate high rise buildings so throughout the discussions with all Secretaries of State in post since 2017, we have demonstrated an eagerness to resolve this issue. For this reason we welcome the renewed interest shown in the subject by Government.
“It should be noted that DLUHC has acknowledged our members ‘continued rapid engagement’ and we continue to work hard to support the Government on this. In response to DLUHC’s 3 February letter HBF has stated that we intend to write to the Department by 25 February with a more complete response. There remains considerable amounts of information still to be gathered to improve Government’s understanding of the scale and likely total costs involved so in the meantime, we continue to urge the Government to provide the industry and others with the high level results and conclusions of its data collection, which has been supported by our members and conducted at pace.”
