Labour MP Hilary Benn has spoken out in favour of buy to let landlords currently expected to pay towards remediation work if there is dangerous cladding on buildings which include their apartments.
The government currently says that only buy to let landlords with no more than one other property should be included in statutory protections for leaseholders.
However, in a Commons debate this week on the Building Safety Bill, Benn argued that this was unfair.
He told fellow MPs: “The government have decided to limit the number of leaseholders who are not resident - buy to let landlords - who can benefit from the scheme. Morally I do not see how anyone can argue they are more responsible for the failings of others than residential leaseholders.
“Also if a building has a lot of buy to let properties and the buy to let landlord leaseholders cannot come up with their share of the money to fix the building, that has an impact on the residential leaseholders and the net result could be that the building does not get fixed and they continue to bear costs that they cannot bear.
“I say ‘cannot bear’ because ultimately that is the reason the government had to move. It was a fantasy to think that leaseholders would come up with sums of money they simply do not have - ridiculous. It was never going to happen.”
The cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities committee of MPs has already demanded that the government look again at excluding scores of landlords from accessing cladding remediation funds.
It disagrees with the government that only buy to let landlords with no more than one other property should be included in statutory protections for leaseholders, arguing that there are other options to exclude the very wealthy without making small landlords liable.
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Very well said,
Surely its the directors of the companies that produced the dangerous cladding that should be pursued. This countries company structure allows fraud or escape of liability on a grand scale..
Agreed, the company will simply be liquidated and start up again the next day under a slightly different name , company law needs an overhaul with company directors made personally responsible for their company debts.
Finally someone who understands how block management works in the real world. Forget equality for a moment, if a block manager does not have commitment from 100% of leaseholders on any section 20 works, and quite often with funds up front, then not only will a contractor refuse the work, the BM wont instruct a contractor in the first place as they cannot take on the risk of defaulting on the commitment. Ergo, blocks with "portfolio" landlords will simply have no work done.
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