Building Safety Act 2022

The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced a number of measures to improve safety in residential buildings and reduce potential risks. The key provisions to the Act include:

Implementation of a compulsory registration system for residential structures, guaranteeing that all such buildings are documented and subject to routine assessments
Protections for qualifying buildings and qualifying leaseholders
Introduction of the notion of the 'Accountable Person' who will bear responsibility for the building's safety across its entire lifespan
Enhanced responsibility and tracking of building materials and products employed in construction
An emphasis on involving and empowering residents, ensuring their input is valued throughout the entirety of the building process

Additionally, the Act creates three new organisations:

Building Safety Regulator
National Regulator of Construction Products
New Homes Ombudsman, to ensure efficient oversight of these reforms

View the Council’s high-rise buildings list.

Leaseholder Protections

The leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act 2022 (“the Act”) came into force on 28 June 2022, with new financial protections for leaseholders in buildings above 11 metres, or five storeys, with historical safety defects.

The Act ensures that those who built defective buildings take responsibility for remedying them, that the industry contributes to fixing the problem, and that leaseholders are protected in law from crippling bills for historical safety defects.

Qualifying leaseholders are protected from all cladding system remediation costs. And those whose property is valued as being less than £325,000 in Greater London, on 14th February 2022, are exempt from all historical relevant defects remediation costs.

The Act also ensures that any contribution required from qualifying leaseholders for non-cladding defects and interim measures (including waking watch costs) is firmly capped and spread over 10 years, with any relevant costs already paid out since 28th June 2017 counting towards the cap. If remediation costs exceed the cap, the Council must make up the difference.

In order to confirm whether your building is a ‘Qualifying Building’, or you are a ‘Qualifying Leaseholder’, please read the information below:

Does your Building Qualify under the Act?

Your building must be above eleven metres, or five floors high;
Building Safety Act 2022 – Section 118;

“The height of a building is to be measured from ground level to the finished surface of the floor of the top storey of the building (ignoring any storey which is a roof-top machinery or plant area or consists exclusively of machinery or plant rooms).
When determining the number of storeys in a building—
a. any storey below ground level is to be disregarded;
b. any mezzanine floor is to be regarded as a storey if its internal floor area is at least half of the internal floor area of the largest storey in the building, which is not below ground level.
In subsection (2) “ground level”, in relation to a building, means—
a. the level of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to the building, or
b. where the level of the surface of the ground on which the building is situated is not uniform, the level of the lowest part of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to it.
For the purposes of subsection (3) a storey is “below ground level” if any part of the finished surface of the ceiling of the storey is below the level of the surface of the ground immediately adjacent to that part of the building.”

Are you a ‘Qualifying Leaseholder’? (completing a Leaseholder Deed of Certificate);

You can choose to complete a Leasehold Deed of Certificate at any point, and/ or you must provide us with a Leaseholder Deed of Certificate when notified to do so. We can then determine whether you are a qualifying leaseholder under the Act, or not.

In order to complete the Leaseholder Deed of Certificate you must include:

the name of the leaseholder on 14 February 2022
whether this was their/ your principal home, or they/ you own three or fewer UK properties
you need to include their/ your official copy, and their/ your sale completion document, as this will determine whether your property was worth more than £325,000 on 14 February 2022

Please note that the deed must be executed by the person who is the leaseholder under the lease, and be executed as a deed (that is, a legal document that is signed by you, and signed and witnessed by someone who is not a family member).

If you are a qualifying leaseholder and your property was worth less than £325,000 on 14 February 2022, then you are not required to contribute towards any ‘relevant defect’* work carried out to your building. If you are a qualifying leaseholder and your property was worth more than £325,000 on 14 February 2022, then you will be capped to contribute no more than £15,000 towards any ‘relevant defect’* work carried out to your building.

*What is ‘Relevant Defect’ work?

The law now defines what a relevant defect is, for the purposes of the leasehold protections, meaning the cost of remediating the defect is covered. For a defect within a building to be defined as a ‘relevant defect’ it must meet all of the following criteria:

It puts peoples safety at risk from the spread of smoke or fire, or structural collapse of the building, or any part of it
It has arisen from work done to a building, including the use of inappropriate or defective products during its construction, or any later works (such as refurbishment of remediation)
It has been created in the 30 years prior to the leaseholder protections coming into force (meaning the defect had to be created from 28 June 1992 to 27 June 2022)
It relates to at least one of the following types of works:
- The initial construction of the building
- The conversion of a non-residential building into a residential building, or
- Any other works undertaken or commissioned by, or on behalf of, the building owner or management company

Work done before, or after, 28 June 2022 to remediate a relevant defect that was itself created during one of the above pieces of work is also covered by the leaseholder protections.

Defects that have arisen in relation to professional services are also covered by the definition of relevant defect. This would include, for example, if an architect or building designer specified the inappropriate use of flammable materials on a building and the contractor followed those designs.

This definition of a relevant defect covers work needed to put right, and ease historical building safety issues, but not, for example, wear and tear or routine maintenance.

Any further queries relating to the Landlord’s Certificate or the Leaseholder Deed of Certificate should to be sent to capitalservices@camden.gov.uk.