Last week (28th Feb – 5th Mar) Lord Naseby introduced an amendment to the Building Safety Bill to make sure that all individual landlords letting out leasehold properties ‘wrapped up’ in the cladding scandal, must be included in the government’s scheme of all leaseholders not having to pay for the remedial cost of the hazardous cladding.

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The government’s proposals state that those landlords with only one BTL property will be covered under its plans for not having to pay any of the cladding replacement costs because the developers will have to fund it themselves for medium-rise buildings – 11 to 18 metres high.

Although the government rejected Lord Naseby’s amendment its Minister, Lord Greenhalgh, has stated it is open to further discussions around landlord support.

His amendment was debated at the Committee Stage of the Bill, where the upper chamber’s peers were discussing its proposed changes. Lord Naseby cited ‘strong representations’ from an industry association on this matter.

He said: “[The UK Government] is introducing a very dangerous principle, basically stating that there are worthy and unworthy victims of the cladding crisis. I ask my noble friend [Lord Greenhalgh, Minister for Building Safety and Fire] to reflect that the Government should make it clear that any and all leaseholders should be treated the same.”

The amendment did however receive cross party backing even from the Shadow Spokesperson for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Baroness Hayman, who said that “leaseholders should not be liable to pay for any costs that have resulted from a faulty regulatory system… all leaseholders should be treated exactly the same”.

Currently the government, as per usual with its PRS anti-landlord campaign as mentioned earlier rejected the amendment, however there will be ongoing discussions on the matter.

In his reply Lord Greenhalgh said that the Government had decided not to accept the amendment, but does recognise: “very real examples of leaseholders with narrow, not broad, shoulders who may have a certain amount of property in their retirement portfolio and have chosen to invest in property as a way of guaranteeing their income in old age… sometimes, there are landlords with pretty narrow shoulders, and I do not think it is the intention of the Secretary of State and the Government to be unduly unfair on those people.” 

Lord Greenhalgh did state that BTL landlords will be eligible to apply for grants to replace hazardous cladding from the Building Safety Fund for high rise properties over 18 metres, ‘irrespective of how many properties they own’.