UK moves to make cladding manufacturers pay and shield more flat owners from repair bills

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner's department announced the changes during the Commons second-reading debate on its new law to fix dangerous cladding. A new scheme will make manufacturers linked to unsafe cladding and insulation installed in past years contribute to repairs, and the government says it will, for the first time, have the powers to recover that money at scale. Details of the scheme will be added to the bill later or published alongside it.

The bill also changes how firms can sue manufacturers. According to London Construction Magazine, which cites the government's guide to the bill, a claim could succeed if the product was unsafe or was sold through misleading conduct, and if its part in making the building unsafe was more than trivial. Developers and other parties that paid for repairs could go after manufacturers directly. Courts would still decide liability and damages. The changes would start two months after Royal Assent and reach cases already in court, within the 30-year time limit for claims under the Building Safety Act.

For flat owners, the government plans to lift the cap for protection from non-cladding defect bills from three properties owned on Feb. 14, 2022, to six. Residents of enfranchised and other collectively owned blocks, left out of today's protections because no separate freeholder stands between them and the bill, would get funding toward high-risk internal fire-safety defects. Ministers are also looking at buyers who lost protection because of a previous owner's status.

Responsible parties that deliberately fail to deal with life-critical external-wall fire risks would face prosecution or a penalty of up to £500,000, and councils or Homes England could ask a tribunal to take control of stalled projects. Committee scrutiny is scheduled to end by Dec. 8, the magazine reported.