Building Safety Funding in Wales

3rd November 2020

The Welsh Government have published an open letter to developers in Wales, regarding high-rise properties. The Housing Minister, Julie James, addresses those concerns of leaseholders who do not feel confident their home is safe, worried about potential building defects and the consequential effect this could have on the broader, fire safety risks. They highlight that this has become of even greater concern to leaseholders, especially during the pandemic and multiple lockdowns due to to the fact we are spending more time at home.

The Welsh Government continue to work with local authorities and the Fire Services to ensure the immediate fire protections are in place, ensuring the best interests of both leaseholders and the public to ensure the responsibility lies with building owners and developers. The Welsh Government suggests that the developers who have failed to build to the required standards should be the ones to put these faults right and not those of the leaseholder or taxpayer.

On a positive note, steps have been taken to remediate non-compliant ACM cladding on buildings, with more information regarding cladding and EWS1 forms on our previous blog here. However, any funding isn’t straight forward as the ownership and management relationships are different for each building, as well as different contractual obligations between the leaseholder, freeholder, the builder, the management company and any insurers or lenders. Therefore a variety of funding models will need to be considered.

To view the full statement and the open letter to developers please visit:

https://gov.wales/written-statement-building-safety-funding-wales

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