Thread by @lewis_goodall

Robert Jenrick: “It should be the builders and the developers paying for all this. It shouldn’t be either leaseholders or taxpayers has to step up.”

This encapsulates the govt’s approach so far on non-cladding issues. Agreeing with leaseholders but not forcing developers to pay

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1410244106387927047

Mr Jenrick has announced today the legal right for leaseholders to take care developers to court for “shoddy workmanship”

A few things to say

1) many leaseholders don’t have the means to sue.
2) this wouldn’t help those in buildings (like Transport House) has older than 15 yrs.

When pushed on this point by @AndrewMarr9 Jenrick said most buildings affected by cladding issues are younger than 15 years.

But *again* this isn’t only or even largely about cladding. Nearly always to listen to ministers you’d think it were.

Jenrick: “I want the developers, the builders, the warranty companies, the insurers- to pay up. I want shoddy workmanship to be paid for by people who did it not by the leaseholders.”

Everyone wants this. The point is that right now in many, many cases they are not.

Question is what (if anything) government is going to do make them. Extending right of litigation isn’t going to get very far given enormous barriers to legal action.

Jenrick said that he doesn’t want the Exchequer to pay given many taxpayers aren’t home owners and developers should instead. But the point is that the state (over decades), in overseeing a poor regime of regulation and enforcement for decades, also has culpability.

Other thing to say in terms of taxpayer exposure is a) taxpayer will find itself paying in other ways if large parts of the property market is destabilised b) the leaseholders are also taxpayers (and literally paid tax on their defective properties)

And c) many were first time buyers using shared ownership or other schemes set up by the government expressly to encourage them to do “the right thing” and get on the property ladder.

And on this there’s also the fact that it will do nothing in cases where the developer in question no longer operates/became insolvent.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1411650631002169346

And the fact that the law can be unclear in the first place. It’s not clear that even if litigation took place the leaseholders would always win. Which is precisely why the state isn’t a neutral/blameless player in all this.