Earlier this week, amendment 64 to the Building Safety Bill said leaseholders should not have to pay for cladding remediation if the dwelling is the leaseholders’ principal home, the leaseholder doesn’t own any another dwelling in the UK or leaseholders only owned one other property in the UK.
Amendment 65, which was tabled by Lord Naseby, would effectively remove the provisos above, so all leaseholders would be treated equally.
In the bill’s second reading Lord Naseby said: “The more I look it, the more I think we now seem to be in slight danger of differentiating one type of leaseholder from another. In a Bill as comprehensive as this, that would not be a sensible move.
“Fundamentally, all leaseholders—whether owner-occupiers or individual landlords—should be treated equally. Not to do so is not only unfair but, I suspect, unnecessary. Buy-to-let landlords and owner-occupier leaseholders face the same problems with developers, through no fault of their own.”
He added: “We also find certain developments where there is a mixture, so in my judgment it would be invidious to deal with just one category rather than another.”
It also comes after Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley tabled a motion that called for buy-to-let landlords and owner-occupier leaseholders to be treated equally.
Amendments welcomed by landlords
The amendments have been welcomed by landlords but there are concerns that the government could delay cladding remediation work as it gets a better grip on which leaseholders are eligible for protection under law.
National Residential Landlords Association’s chief executive Ben Beadle said the body welcomed Lord Naseby’s amendment and called on peers to support the proposal.
He added: “It makes no sense for the government to treat landlord leaseholders so differently to owner-occupiers. Both groups have faced the same problems at the hands of developers, and therefore both should be treated equally. This amendment would go a long way to rectifying this unfairness.”
The bill will enter the committee stage in the House of Lords, which is a line-by-line examination of the bill, on Monday.
The government has also started taking a harder line on leasehold law to make builders and developers pay for cladding costs, with new rules introduced this week.
This followed secretary of state Michael Gove writing to developers in January telling them they must pay to remove dangerous cladding from tower blocks.
