Alternative cost recovery for remediation works consultation – briefing for housing associations

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) is currently consulting on alternative cost recovery for remediation works.

The Building Safety Act introduced regulations to protect leaseholders from paying towards the cost of building safety and remediation works. The protections mean that where a building owner or landlord is, or is connected, to the developer responsible for a relevant defect, they cannot legally pass on the costs associated with remediating the defect to any of their leaseholders.

However, should certain conditions be met, where a building owner or landlord is not connected to the developer, some remediation costs can be passed to leaseholders.

For the costs that can be passed to leaseholders, the government will create a new duty that will require landlords to take reasonable steps to ensure that all alternative avenues of cost recovery have been explored before passing remediation costs on to leaseholders.

As part of this consultation, DLUHC is seeking views on:

• The buildings and defects to which the new duty should apply.
• The detailed steps that landlords should follow before passing on remediation costs to leaseholders – which closely align to the steps landlords will need to follow before applying to the government’s Building Safety Fund.
• The information that landlords must pass on to leaseholders to demonstrate they have complied with this duty.

This briefing summarises the key points of the consultation.

The NHF will be submitting a sector response to this consultation. To help shape our response and share your views, please get in touch with Annie Owens, Policy Leader by 24 March 2023.