Government scraps building safety manager under raft of Building Safety Bill amendments

Landlords would have been allowed to recover some of the cost of hiring these managers through the building safety charge, which was to be charged to leaseholders in addition to their service charge.

Many social landlords have already hired building safety managers, however leaseholders have raised concerns that these managers, who can be paid salaries of roughly £60,000 per year, will be an expensive cost for them to cover.

The new amendments remove the legal requirement for a building safety manager, leaving it up to the accountable person for a building, who is usually the building owner, to ensure they have the necessary arrangements in place to meet their obligations under the new act.

Guidance will be published by the Building Safety Regulator to support building owners in this.

The amendments will also see the scrapping of the building safety charge, with any building safety costs now being included in leaseholders’ service charge instead.

Housing secretary Michael Gove said: “No leaseholder should pay the price for shoddy development and we have listened to their concerns, removing the requirement for a separate building safety charge and scrapping compulsory building safety managers, to help avoid unnecessary costs.”

These amendments come one month after ministers announced a series of wide-ranging changes to the Building Safety Bill in order to shield leaseholders from the cost of remediation work.

This included prohibiting leaseholders in blocks above 11 metres tall from being charged for any cladding work, while the amount chargeable for other building safety work is to be capped at £10,000, or £15,000 in London.

The new amendments now confirm that residents living in properties worth less than £175,000 outside of London and £325,000 inside London cannot be charged anything for any type of remediation work. 

Following February’s announcement, there was uncertainty over whether these protections would be extended to buy-to-let landlords, with the government stating that it was exploring the issue.

Confirming that the protections would be extended to leaseholders who own up to three properties, Mr Gove said his government was “increasing support for small landlords”.

The amendments also strengthen the new remediation contribution orders, which can be used by courts to require developers and their associated companies to pay for remediation of buildings they have developed.

It follows February’s announcement that courts would be given powers to force associated companies to pay for an organisation’s debt when it is being closed down, in a bid to prevent developers using shell companies to avoid paying for work.

Mr Gove said: “There is more to do, but this package builds on the legal protections I set out earlier this year and will help to bring this scandal to an end and make industry pay.”