Building Safety: Monthly Update

I have undertaken to provide the House with a monthly building safety update.

On 10 February I announced my five-point plan to bring an end to unsafe cladding and my officials are working at pace to develop and deliver the products, systems and legislation associated with these:

1. The Government will pay for the removal of unsafe cladding for leaseholders in all residential buildings 18 metres and over in England

2. A generous finance scheme to provide reassurance for leaseholders in buildings between 11 and 18 metres, ensuring they never pay more than £50 a month for cladding removal

3. An industry levy and tax to ensure developers play their part

4. A world-class new safety regime to ensure a tragedy like Grenfell never happens again

5. Providing confidence to this part of the housing market including lenders and surveyors

We have now committed an unprecedented £5 billion investment in building safety. This will ensure taxpayer funding is targeted at the highest risk buildings in line with longstanding independent expert advice.

We continue to make good progress on the remediation of unsafe cladding, with around 95% of all high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding identified by the beginning of last year now either remediated or started on site.

Our expectation is that unsafe ACM remediation should be completed as soon as possible and by the end of 2021 at the latest.

Full details of our progress with ACM cladding remediation can be found in the Department’s monthly building safety data release, which will next be published on 15 April on the Government’s website.

Previous monthly building safety data releases can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/aluminium-composite-material-cladding#acm-remediation-data.

As at 31 March 2021, the building safety fund registration statistics show that 1,075 decisions have been made on the basis that sufficient supporting information has now been received. Of these, 668 registered buildings are proceeding with a full application and 407 have been shown to be ineligible, mostly on grounds of not meeting the published criteria or because they do not have unsafe cladding systems in place. The total amount of funding allocated is £319.2 million (including social sector) correct at 31 March 2021. Full details can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/remediation- of-non-acm-buildings#building-safety-fund-registration-statistics.

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