The Building Safety Act 2022 established new legal duties for landlords and building owners, or those under a repairing obligation for any of the common parts in the building, of higher-risk residential buildings to keep their buildings safe.
There will be an ongoing cost associated with complying with some of these building safety duties, which can be passed to leaseholders through the service charge. This does not include remediation costs, which are subject to different requirements (for example, the leaseholder protections in the Building Saftety Act 2022).
The government has committed to ensure that this element of the service charge is transparent to leaseholders, to give leaseholders information about what they are paying for to keep the building safe and assurance that the manager of the building is charging reasonably.
This consultation asks for views on policy proposals to ensure this transparency. These proposals apply to landlords, meaning any person who has a right to enforce payment of a service charge.
This consultation document and consultation process have been planned to adhere to the Consultation Principles issued by the Cabinet Office.
Representative groups are asked to give a summary of the people and organisations they represent, and where relevant who else they have consulted in reaching their conclusions when they respond.
Information provided in response to this consultation may be published or disclosed in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and UK data protection legislation. In certain circumstances this may therefore include personal data when required by law.
If you want the information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, as a public authority, the Department is bound by the information access regimes and may therefore be obliged to disclose all or some of the information you provide. In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Department.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will at all times process your personal data in accordance with UK data protection legislation and in the majority of circumstances this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties. A full privacy notice is included below.
Individual responses will not be acknowledged unless specifically requested.
Your opinions are valuable to us. Thank you for taking the time to read this document and respond.
Are you satisfied that this consultation has followed the Consultation Principles? If not or you have any other observations about how we can improve the process please contact us via the complaints procedure.