Partner Gurpreet Sanghera comments on how leaseholders and developers will be impacted by the Building Safety Act
Gurpreet’s comments were published in Property Week on 12 May 2022, and can be found here.
“While this will come as a huge relief for leaseholders, many developers may feel aggrieved at the
government’s approach, which is to lay the blame at the door of developers, rather than going after
the individuals who made these decisions at the time. Somebody signed these buildings off, but it
seems the government is saying very little about that. As things stand, the law provides that building
control cannot be held liable for negligently signing off building plans.
“It also seems there is no distinction between developers that were involved in mishandling
developments and those that have been squeaky clean and always provided top-quality
developments for leaseholders. By penalising the industry as a whole, this broad-brush approach
seems to me to be slightly unfair.
“While the act is great news, there is still a lot of uncertainty. There is the tax on profits, but this has
not been distinguished from the money the government has pledged to fix the cladding problem. The
costings have not come through and it is not entirely clear how much money is required at this stage.”
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