More than half of the £1bn fund announced in the Budget of March 2020 has been spent on works on private and social housing as of 31 July 2021.
The Building Safety Fund was to be allocated to works on blocks of 18 metres or higher in 2020 to 2021.
The private sector accounted for the majority of the money allocated, at a total value of £499.2m. The value of the money approved for the social sector stands at £78.7m.
In total, 2,820 registrations for the fund have been made by the private sector. Of those, 663 proceeded to an application.
Some 477 registrations made by building owners in the private sector were ineligible, while 548 withdrew their applications.
As of 31 July, 342 registrations are under review and 545 have no available evidence to assess their verification for the fund.
Some £318.4m has been provided to remediate 127 residential buildings with non-ACM cladding while £62.4m have been issued to 36 properties with both ACM and non-ACM cladding.
This week, the government revealed it was considering amending the Building Safety Bill to introduce a principle of ‘polluter pays’. If implemented, this will allow the government to pursue remediation and interim safety costs from responsible parties in the construction industry, such as developers and builders, rather than leaseholders or homeowners.
The clause will have no time limitations and will divide building owners into two groups, those that did not comply to building regulation at the time of construction, and those that were compliant when they were built but are no longer compliant following Grenfell.
