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<p>The Building Safety Act puts in place legal protections for leaseholders from historical
building safety costs. The Act legally protects qualifying leaseholders (those living
in their own home or with no more than three UK properties in total) from all costs
relating to the remediation of unsafe cladding and contains robust and far-reaching
protections from non-cladding costs, including those relating to interim measures
such as waking watches. Where those directly responsible (for example, developers)
cannot be held to account, building owners and landlords, rather than leaseholders,
will now be the first port of call to pay for historical safety defects.</p><p>The
Building Safety Act spreads the costs of fixing historical building safety defects
as fairly and equitably as possible across the system. If building owners and landlords
on 14 February were, or were related to the developer of the building, they are liable
for the full cost of remediating all building safety defects, whether cladding or
otherwise, to the benefit of all leaseholders. Qualifying leaseholders will be protected
from all costs for remediation works if the building owners and landlord have a net
worth of more than £2 million per in-scope building.</p><p>It is not our default expectation
that building owners and landlords, including pension funds, will have to fund remediation
works from their own resources: we want them to pursue those responsible for defective
work, including associated companies of developers and manufacturers. That is why
y there is now a toolkit of measures available under the Building Safety Act 2022
to enable that to happen.</p><p>We have retrospectively extended the limitation period
under section 1 of the Defective Premises Act 1972 from 6 to 30 years; we have extended
the reach of civil liability to associated companies of developers, including trusts,
to ensure that some of the largest businesses in the sector who have used shell companies
and other complex corporate structures to be pursed for contributions; and we have
created a cause of action which will allow manufacturers of construction products
to be pursued where defective or mis-sold products have been used in buildings.</p>
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