Leaseholder Remediation bill to be debated in House of Lords – Mortgage Strategy

Leasehold building safety will be in the spotlight again tomorrow as the Leaseholder Remediation (Building Safety) Bill gets its second reading in the House of Lords.

The Private Member’s Bill was introduced by Baroness Pinnock and aims to plug several holes in the Building Safety Act 2022, brought in after the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Many provisions of the Building Safety Act do not apply to buildings of less than 11 metres in height. Government figures show there are between 5,900 and 7,400 residential buildings in England that have or had unsafe cladding.

The Leaseholder Remediation Bill aims to address this, as well as other measures such as helping protect leaseholders from the costs of historical building safety failures.

It also aims to make it a duty for freeholders and building owners to complete building safety works within set timeframes, with leaseholders able to force this if action is not taken.

It is separate to the government’s recent draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, which proposes capping ground rent for existing leaseholders at £250 before reducing it to zero over 40 years.

Baroness Pinnock said: “This is a question of justice. Innocent leaseholders must not be paying the price for serious building defects where they live. Some of these defects were the result of deliberate actions by those responsible during construction, as the Grenfell Inquiry concluded.

“This bill, if accepted by the Government, will take a giant step in fully protecting leaseholders and requiring those who created the building safety issues to be responsible for the cost of remediation.”

The bill has considerable distance to go before becoming law.

Only 5% of private members bills ever become legislation.

Additionally, this bill must go through the committee, report and third readings in the Lords, then go through five review stages in the Commons.

Any amendments by the Commons will push the bill back to the Lords, and any further amendments by the Lords will push it back to the Commons.

Only when both sides agree can a bill become law, and if they cannot agree then the bill is withdrawn.