Thread by @nearlylegal

Watched the @CommonsHCLG evidence of @team_greenhalgh Some thoughts on the minister’s position on the draft Building Safety Bill, with a particular view on the position of leaseholders.

First, they are continuing to explore ‘buildings with multiple owners’ - I’m not surprised as multiple accountable persons would be a nightmare. Second ‘we need to hear the voice of residents’ - well yes, but apparently have not done so so far, which is, you know, a bit late.

Thirdly, ‘could learn from Australia’ - no signs of having done so at all… Fourthly ‘looking at these costs, trying to unblock the finances, and make sure costs to leaseholders affordable, but nothing to report now’ says Expert Adviser Michael Wade (insurer background) -

- good luck with that. (Why are no L&T people involved in this? Why is it all regulatory and insurance people? Why is there nobody with a grasp of leasehold law?) (though weirdly, I might be very distantly related in law in law to Michael Wade through the Dashwoods).

Fifthly, it is fair to say @team_greenhalgh that you can’t simultaneously rely on leaseholders liability to pay under their leases under existing L&T law (true, but you are the Govt, and can change that) & impose further new liabilities on leaseholders to pay under the draft BSB

Either you are helpless in the face of existing L&T law, or you aren’t & can change it. You propose to change it, but not to assist leaseholders in a position of deep trouble. Instead you propose to change it to make things worse for them. You acknowledge overriding lease terms.

And this ‘affordable’ thing? Either you are proposing to restrict building safety costs, which is practically impossible, or you are proposing an alternate source of funds aside from leaseholders, at which point the ‘it is L&T law argument’

falls apart, because you are providing for a different source of funds outside of the leases. Meaning that there is no ‘oh we have no choice’ argument about leaseholders paying at all. That is your political choice, that the victim, not the polluter, pays.

The brute choice is that if remedial works cost X and ‘affordable’ is Y, if X is greater than Y, you have to find other funding sources or the works won’t happen. If you can find the extra funds from somewhere else, how to justify charging leaseholders Y under their leases?

This is particularly an issue for historic problems, but also to some degree for new builds. Any change of civil liability for breach of building regulations is removed, and currently no extension of Defective Premises Act 1972 liability.

And finally, the whole thing suggested that the minister and those advising really haven’t got a clue, still.