The government has written to property developers asking for an update on measures to help fund plans to solve the cladding crisis.
Richard Goodman, Director General - Safer and Greener Buildings, has sent a letter to residential property developers to remind them of the new government approach to reaching an agreement on building safety and seeking further information.
He thanks them for the engagement to date and for the returns that have been submitted already, reminding the sector of the February 7 deadline.
Mr Goodman says the Government is also actively engaging with product manufacturers around their contributions to resolving the crisis.
He said the Government is keen keen to publicly acknowledge in mid-February the commitments developers and product manufacturers have made to undertake remediation of any building they have played a part in developing.
He says any announcement must seek to reassure leaseholders that those developers who sign up to the arrangements and who are themselves the freeholder will not initiate forfeiture proceedings against leaseholders with respect to charges or costs associated with carrying out remediation works
The letter states: “We will be analysing the data to better understand the buildings you will be undertaking to remediate against the overall size of the residual pool of 11-18m buildings that will need to be remediated via a central fund. We will look to share further information once this process is complete.
“I would be grateful if you could start creating a fuller return with all 11m+ buildings that you have developed so that we can match these against our database of buildings that need remediation where we do not have developer information. We would be grateful for this information by 7th February. Thank you for your continued rapid engagement on this work, which helps us better to understand the overall remediation demand and the scale of contributions being made and required.
“As part of this process we will share information on relevant buildings within existing funding programmes to agree how developers can take responsibility. Details on individual buildings will be shared with you, starting this week.
“We wish to ensure that those developers who are committed to making a full contribution do so on a level playing field, with a clear and transparent set of commitments that developers will be expected to make. We envisage that those who meet these commitments will be recognised as the responsible actors in this market.
“We will therefore be taking steps to codify the commitments that developers will be asked to make, centred on the two fundamental propositions of the government’s approach, as the Secretary of State set out at his first roundtable.”
The letter can be seen in full here.
It goes on to add: “Those who agree to fulfil the commitments set out will continue to enjoy the benefits of the Government’s services and support on financing, procurement, planning, building control, housing investment, and industry development and leadership.
“Those who are unwilling to meet these criteria will not, and the Secretary of State has made clear he is willing to explore taking further steps to ensure the only participants in this market are those who have committed to resolving this crisis.”
