Individual building owners and managers are responsible for health and safety, including responding to safety alerts such as RAAC.

On the 1st May 2019, the Standing Committee on Structural Safety issued a safety alert on the failure of RAAC planks.

The government has already funded extensive RAAC mitigation works across the NHS and are working closely with responsible bodies to manage RAAC in the long-term across the education estate, via capital funding provided to the sector each year.

Government will consider the approach to any RAAC in other public sector estates on a case-by-case basis.

Departments have been asked to report on the current picture of suspected and confirmed RAAC in their estates as soon as possible. This will be updated on a regular basis as new buildings are identified and surveying and remediation are carried out.

Government published lists of education settings confirmed as having RAAC on Wednesday 6 September and committed to providing further updates.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a transaction tax and becomes payable at the time a property is purchased. The tax has to be able to apply in a range of different situations.

The Government has no plans at present to change the SDLT higher rates exceptional circumstances provisions, but it keeps all tax policy under review.

HM Revenue & Customs does not record the number of refunds of the higher rates of SDLT made in relation to issues with external wall cladding.

On the 30 January 2023, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities announced that we will take action to ban property managing agents, landlords and freeholders from receiving commissions and other payments from insurance firms, replacing such payments with more transparent fees.

Leaseholders will also have more information to enable them to better scrutinise their insurance costs, while also ensuring that leaseholders are not subject to unjustified legal costs and that they can claim their legal costs back from their landlord.

The FCA are currently undertaking their own review of high broker commission identified in their 21 September report which will be published in March 2023. I intend to meet the FCA again to discuss their work.

On 1 December, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) confirmed they are working to launch a scheme to reduce high premiums for those in buildings with significant fire safety issues. Ministers will continue to monitor the progress of the scheme and have made clear that they expect the scheme to be delivered as soon as is feasible to provide urgent assistance to affected buildings.

The Department is preparing detailed analysis of the data collected for the Condition Data Collection (CDC) programme and plan to publish the details by the end of the year.

The key, high-level findings of the CDC programme, were published in May 2021 in the report ‘Condition of School Buildings Survey – Key Findings’.

The report is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/989912/Condition_of_School_Buildings_Survey_CDC1_-_key_findings_report.pdf.

The Department has no plans to make a statement.

The Department is preparing detailed analysis of the data collected for the Condition Data Collection (CDC) programme and plan to publish the details by the end of the year.

The key, high-level findings of the CDC programme, were published in May 2021 in the report ‘Condition of School Buildings Survey – Key Findings’.

The report is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/989912/Condition_of_School_Buildings_Survey_CDC1_-_key_findings_report.pdf.

The Department has no plans to make a statement.

The Secretary of State has made it clear that developers must take responsibility for buildings with which they are associated. As of 23 May, 45 of the largest developers have signed a pledge to undertake all necessary life-critical fire safety work on 11m+ buildings they had a role in developing or refurbishing over the past thirty years.

Those pledges are being converted into legally binding contractual commitments, and the Department intends to establish a statutory Responsible Actors Scheme to make sure that industry actors are doing the right thing. The Department is now reaching out to further industry actors who were not involved in initial negotiations, and inviting them to make similarly binding commitments.

We have made clear that we will not hesitate to use our recovery unit and new powers in the Building Safety Act to go after companies and executives who fail to do the right thing.

We have also committed to using a building safety levy on the industry to raise a further £3 billion to pay for remediating cladding on 11m+ buildings where a developer cannot be identified or held responsible.

Building owners are responsible for the safety of their building, including keeping residents informed of any building safety work they are undertaking and for making sure that any disruption to residents is minimised. There is no requirement by Government to plan or fund other works unrelated to the removal of unsafe cladding in order for Government-funded remediation to take place.

The Government strongly supports the expert group's view that EWS1s should not be required for buildings under 18 metres and continues to challenge industry on the use of the EWS1 process. Government continues to engage directly with lenders on this issue.

Building owners are responsible for the safety of their building, including keeping residents informed of any building safety work they are undertaking and for ensuring that any disruption to residents is minimised. Likewise building owners, or their representatives, are also responsible for the planning and delivery of the remediation of unsafe cladding being funded by the Building Safety Fund. As part of the funding application building owners must inform residents of the nature of the works they intend to carry out and provide them with regular updates on the progress of the remediation and they must ensure remediation projects follow best industry practice.

Following the Independent Expert Statement in July this year on Building Safety in medium and lower rise blocks of flats, the Government strongly supports the expert group's position that EWS1 forms should not be required on buildings under 18 metres. Any concerns identified in buildings under 18 metres, via an up to date statutory fire risk assessment, should be addressed primarily by risk management and mitigation, before any remediation considerations.

An independent expert statement in July this year was clear that there is no systemic risk of fire in residential buildings under 18 metres and that EWS1 forms should not be required by lenders on buildings under 18 metres. The Government strongly supports this position and made this clear in its written statement of 21 July.

High Pressure Laminate (HPL) panels can have a wide range of fire performance and so the Department has not published a list of approved HPL products.

However, following the test carried out by the Department in 2019, an advice note was published to provide advice to building owners on the fire performance of HPL cladding system. This advice note was then included in the Consolidated Advice Note which is available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/869532/Building_safety_advice_for_building_owners_including_fire_doors_January_2020.pdf

The Secretary of State has confirmed that we will shortly retire the consolidated advice note in favour of the development of new more risk-proportionate guidelines for fire risk assessors including PAS 9980 which will include information on HPL.

Trespa Meteon FR is a High Pressure Laminate (HPL). In the summer of 2019, the Department commissioned a large scale (BS 8414) test of an external wall system which included an FR HPL (Class B-s1, d0) and mineral wool insulation (class A1). The test was successful as the system met the criteria of BR 135 Fire performance of external thermal insulation for walls of multistorey buildings. The results can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-test-report-mhclg-bs-8414-hpl.

The Department also commissioned research into the burning behaviours of a range of non-ACM cladding materials including HPL. The aim was to identify if there were other types of cladding that burn like the type of metal composite material which was present on the Grenfell Tower, which was an aluminium composite material (ACM) with an unmodified polyethylene core (called ACM PE, or 'ACM category 3'). The research was published in March 2020 and is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-performance-of-cladding-materials-research.

The findings of both the large-scale test and the aforementioned research supported the advice provided by the Expert Panel – notably building safety advice for building owners, including around fire doors – that ACM PE presents the most significant fire hazard. The consolidated advice note, including the expert panel advice with regards to HPL, can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/869532/Building_safety_advice_for_building_owners_including_fire_doors_January_2020.pdf.

More than half of private sector high-rise residential buildings with unsafe ACM cladding have had their remediation costs paid for by warranties, developers or the building owner. Where this is not happening or is not happening at a quick enough pace the Government has made £600 million of funding available to building owners to remediate unsafe ACM cladding in residential buildings 18m and over. As part of the funding agreement applicants are required to demonstrate that they have taken all reasonable steps to recover the costs of replacing the unsafe cladding from those responsible through insurance claims, warranties or legal action.

Where applicants have successfully recovered funding for part of the costs of remediation this will be reflected in their grant from the relevant fund, which will be lower than it would have been if the full costs needed to be covered. Our latest data shows this amounts to savings to the taxpayer of over £27 million across the Private Sector ACM Fund, Social Sector ACM Fund and Building Safety Fund as of end February 2021. However, given the recovery of funding from those responsible for the presence of unsafe cladding can be a lengthy and complex process we expect it to take some time to see money returned in cases where a grant covering the full cost of remediation has been made.

This information is not held.

The department has published estimates regarding EWS1 requirements on residential buildings in England and these estimates are available online here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-safety-programme-estimates-of-ews1-requirements-on-residential-buildings-in-england/building-safety-programme-estimates-of-ews1-requirements-on-residential-buildings-in-england.

The analysis is based on information provided by local authorities and housing associations who are conducting a data collection exercise as part of a programme to build a more complete picture of high-rise residential buildings and the variety of external wall systems in use.

To speed up valuations where EWS1 forms are justified, the Government is providing nearly £700,000 funding to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to train up to 2,000 more assessors in 2021. This training commenced in January and there are over 700 candidates on the course.

We are considering the information provided by respondents to the call for evidence, and will be publishing a response.

The Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government made an oral statement to the House of Commons on building safety on 10 February 2021.

The Barnett formula is applied to changes in departmental funding. Therefore, the level of Barnett will be confirmed at future fiscal events and spending reviews when there are changes to the level of funding for MHCLG.

To give residents in lower-rise buildings of 11-18 metres peace of mind, we are establishing a generous scheme to ensure that cladding removal on these buildings can take place where required, whilst ensuring that no leaseholder in these buildings will have to pay more than £50 per month towards this remediation.

We will release further details of the finance scheme for 11-18 metres buildings.