Briefings and responses

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities held a consultation on the Building Safety Levy between 22 November 2022 and 7 February 2023. The consultation sought views on the design and implementation of the Levy.

This letter details what RAAC is, its dangers, and the immediate actions that councils can take.

The LGA has direct experience of the failure of the construction product testing regime in two respects: the testing of cladding systems and the testing of fire doors.

The LGA believes the Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing (EEIS+) proposal could form the basis of a useful backup to the requirement for Responsible Persons to identify residents who are unable to self-evacuate and make every reasonable adjustment to ensure that they can do so, through the provision of a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan.

The LGA has a set of core asks around the Building Safety Bill. These are addressed in order of priority.

The LGA has four core asks around the Building Safety Bill.

No leaseholder should have to pay the costs of making their homes safe and the Secretary of State’s threat to use the legal system to ensure developers meet their responsibilities to leaseholders is a positive step in the right direction. However, leaseholders are not the only innocent victims of the construction industry’s failure to build safe homes.

Rather than responding to every question in the consultation, our response focuses primarily on concerns about the potential impact of the tax on affordable housing delivery and where the proposed ‘collection agent’ role should sit.

The most controversial aspect of the Bill remains the question of who pays to remediate the consequences of twenty years of systemic failure in building safety.