Homeowners hit with thousands in charges for new building safety rules

Michael Gove MP Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations

Building safety regulations introduced by Michael Gove in the wake of the Grenfell fire are leaving leasehold homeowners with four-figure bills.

Reforms introduced last year by the housing secretary require lengthy building reviews that cost £144 an hour.

Since October buildings over 18 metres in height must be registered with the new Building Safety Regulator (BSR).

As part of the registration a safety case report must be submitted, identifying building safety risks and explaining how those risks are being managed.

Putting together the safety case reports may mean commissioning additional professional assessments or investigations to give a full picture of how a building aligns with the requirements – all coming at a cost being passed on by the building manager.

It is the latest side-effect of health and safety reforms since Grenfell which have previously left leasehold flat owners facing bills to remove dangerous cladding, fund fire wardens and cover rising insurance bills.

It comes despite Michael Gove promising to end the “feudal” leasehold system under the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which MPs warned on Monday will not come into force until 2026.

The reforms aim to give leaseholders in houses more rights to buy the freehold to their property or extend their lease; however, leasehold tenancies on flats will not be banned. Owning a property leasehold means that you must pay ground rent and service charges to the freeholder – the ultimate owner of the building and land.

The BSR began reviewing buildings in April this year, starting with the most dangerous.

Flat owners are already having the costs of the safety case reports added to their service charges.

A survey of 50 affected buildings, conducted by campaign group End Our Cladding Scandal (EOCS), found that on average leaseholders are being charged £600 a year to comply with the new building safety regime.

One Telegraph reader who owns a two-bedroom flat in Southampton, one of 281 in a complex of nine buildings, said the service charge for his leasehold flat has increased 58pc this year to £6,203.68, with the building safety charges adding £1,414 alone to the bill.

He said his managing agent had added £276,091 for building safety costs, shared between all of the flat owners, and another £11,280 for the building registration fee.

“I worked hard and saved a lot of money to buy an apartment rather than rent a place,” he said. “The additional costs are to do with the BSR, but no one had any idea or indication of how much this would cost. I had anticipated that it would be bad.”

Giles Grover, of EOCS, said: “We first warned the Government about these impending enormous costs over two years ago. Unfortunately, the Building Safety legislation – whilst well-intentioned – means that innocent leaseholders are still being forced to pay huge sums to put right decades of wrongdoing by the state and industry.”

Labour peer, Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, has tabled an amendment to the leasehold bill, which is advancing to its first stage in the House of Lords, that would cap costs arising from the new building safety regulatory framework at £75 a year.

In recognition of the issue housing minister Lee Rowley MP and Philip White, director of building safety at the Health and Safety Executive, sent an open letter on April 17 to building managers warning of “unacceptably high charges being quoted and charged for services related to the production of safety case reports”.

The letter continues that managers are incorrectly assuming new “investigations and assessments are needed for building safety cases” when in fact “if you own or manage a high-rise building, you should already have been keeping much of the information required for the safety case reports”.

The Government was approached for further comment.

Recommended

The ‘right to manage’ rules that can give leaseholders more control

Read more

Play The Telegraph’s brilliant range of Puzzles – and feel brighter every day. Train your brain and boost your mood with PlusWord, the Mini Crossword, the fearsome Killer Sudoku and even the classic Cryptic Crossword.