It is now one year since the Building Safety Act 2022 came into force, intended to be the most substantial legislative response to the nationwide building safety crisis that ensued after the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.

While the primary objective of the legislation was to make buildings safe, the actual impact was to shift the narrative away from those responsible for the crisis – the government itself through its botched approach to regulation, as well as developers and product manufacturers – by apportioning liability for remediation works onto leaseholders and building owners, most of whom played no role in the creation of the crisis.

The primary legislation is widely regarded as being poorly drafted and there remains a patchwork of secondary legislation, government funding and building safety schemes, which industry must now reckon with, alongside the liabilities set out in the primary legislation.

The latest government data shows a total of 797 high-rise buildings have been completely remediated out of the 3,839 that have been identified with unsafe cladding. This is in addition to the estimated 8,890 further medium-rise buildings that also require ‘life-critical’ safety work, not to mention an unknown number of low-rise buildings not protected by the Act that also face the prospect of having to have defects remediated.

These statistics alone show there is a clear need for an improved approach to address the building safety crisis, while holding those responsible to account. The scope of the crisis goes beyond external cladding systems as there is increasing evidence that corners have been cut internally, and that some buildings may have been signed off despite not being built in accordance with the approved plans.

For the sake of leaseholders’ safety, if the pace of resolution is to quicken, it will require not just acknowledgement of the plethora of genuine issues, but also solutions from government.

An inconsistent regulatory and funding regime

Following last-minute amendments at the final legislative hurdle of the Building Safety Act 2022 passing through the House of Lords, a ‘waterfall’ payment model was introduced by the government.

The ‘waterfall’ promoted the apportioning of liability over providing a consistent means of accessing funding to fix unsafe buildings quickly. This has led to delays in arranging funds and getting remediation works on site.

Although the government has, after some persuasion, made funding available for the remediation of external cladding systems, the funding regimes only seek to make buildings ‘half safe’ as none of them cover internal fire safety defects such as missing compartmentation or fire stopping.

With obligations often falling on freehold investors, who were not responsible for the building safety crisis, and who may not have the funds to match the newly imposed liabilities, the government has created a regime that focuses on lengthy negotiation and litigation, rather than the need to remediate promptly and provide certainty to leaseholders.

Ongoing issues with the Developer Pledge

Instead of holding developers to account via legislation, the government asked developers to sign up voluntarily to a “pledge”.

The ongoing rollout of this pledge has further slowed the progression of remediation projects as the terms of the pledge were agreed between government and developers, without reference to building owners.

Building owners have, as a result, been forced to commence lengthy negotiations with all the developers to put in place legal agreements relating the terms of remediation projects. Given the Pledge is still gaining signatories two years after its introduction, the government’s unpredictable approach to securing developer commitments continues to prolong the risk of leaseholders living in unsafe buildings.

Significant inconsistencies surrounding developer liability under the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Self Remediation Terms (SRT) make the process even more difficult to navigate, leading to increasing pushback from developers who treat their liabilities as being defined only by the SRT rather than the legislation.

Leaseholders and building owners have been made liable for a crisis caused by weak regulation and negligent construction practice, and while remediation is progressing, the issues outlined above mean prolonged delays will persist.

Given that little has been done to improve standards via the regulatory regime, and the less-than-optimal progress shown by official data, a future government will have to seriously consider an alternative approach to the current building safety regime.

Advances in technology have seen the increasing popularity of battery-powered personal transport such as e-scooters and electric bikes, which can be stored and charged in the home.

Charging the batteries however presents a potential fire risk to surrounding property. Our insurers, Ecclesiastical, have provided a handy guide to best practice when charging.

Click here to read the guide

In 2030, it will no longer be possible in the UK to buy a conventional, fossil fuelled car. So the future is electric, and most drivers have either bought a hybrid or fully electric car, or are considering it when they next change.

But new technology brings new risks. EV chargers, lithium batteries and solar car parks all present potentially enhanced fire risk unless planned and managed carefully.

There are particular challenges in blocks of flats, especially if the chargers are fitted in a covered and/or underground area.

Zurich Insurance Company has produced a useful guide, which can be accessed via the link below, outlining the risks and how these can be mitigated by good practice through the lifetime of an installation.

So if your Man Co or RA is considering options for your own block, we hope this guideline will help your planning process, before engaging with your landlord.

Earlier this year we were pleased to launch our new website. We did this primarily to help our homeowners to better understand what E&J Estates does as a company and improve our communication with homeowners. We also wanted to make it easier to access helpful contacts and answers to common queries on topics such as insurance renewals, payments and lease variations.

As part of this commitment to improving the openness and transparency of our communications, we also conducted a survey on how homeowners interact with us and their views on the experience of that communication.

We were pleased that over a thousand people took part in the survey, providing us with a wealth of useful feedback. A large majority (78%) of those who responded told us they found our answers to their queries either fairly helpful or very helpful. 77% of respondents told us their issue was resolved after contacting us. When asked to describe the response they received, the most commonly selected options were ‘friendly’, ‘polite’ and ‘professional’.

It’s great to receive positive feedback, but we know there is a lot we can still do to improve our service and how we communicate with homeowners. After reviewing the feedback received from the survey, we are keen to make changes where possible to address some of the most common issues raised.

One of the most frequently raised subjects was response times for enquiries. We fully appreciate that our existing service standard of a 10 day response time, whilst in-line with industry standards, can prove frustrating for people who have tight deadlines, for example when selling their property. In reality, in most cases we do better than the service standard. We will therefore reflect this by reducing our target to a maximum of 7 days and will task our teams to achieve this. We hope to reduce the target further in future.

Similarly, several respondents highlighted improvements that could be made to the tone and helpfulness of communications with E&J staff, particularly when a homeowner has problems or may be in financial difficulty. We will continue our practice of encouraging our teams to recognise the importance of empathy and a helpful approach, and will ensure that this remains central in our staff training

Finally, looking at the website itself and how customers interact with it, a number of people suggested that we could improve self-service options to allow access to statements, confirmation of payment status and other useful information. We are currently assessing options in these areas.

We also hope the refreshed website will answer many common queries, promote better access to our specialist teams and provide a platform to keep homeowners up to date with our work to support them.
Going forward, we will continue to evaluate our service regularly, to ensure we are continually providing a professional and helpful response, and that dealing with us is as simple as possible.

Thank you to all of you who took part in the survey and we welcome any further feedback or comments, which can be made by emailing enquiries@eandjestates.co.uk