The government’s race to remediate unsafe homes: the promises and pitfalls

The government recently published its Remediation Acceleration Plan, which relates to the external walls of multi-occupancy residential buildings over 11m in height. The published plan is the first stage of the proposals by the government to “fix buildings faster” and “to remediate at pace” to ensure that the risks and costs to residents of living in buildings that are deemed unsafe are reduced as quickly as possible. It is proposed that the second phase of the plan will be published in summer 2025.

Although I completely agree that the buildings must be remediated as soon as possible, the use of the word ‘pace’ is a little worrying, as we do not want to be remediating buildings only to have to remediate them again due to non-compliance or poor-quality construction work. This has happened with some of the buildings that were remediated in the first years following the Grenfell tragedy.

There is obviously a large consequential impact on the residents, environment, and costs of having to remediate remediation. So, the government must ensure that the risk assessment, design, and construction work are undertaken with an appropriate level of oversight and by competent professionals.

The plan sets out that the developers who have signed the Developer’s Pledge must complete external wall remediation on 80% of the buildings they are responsible for by July 2026 and 100% by July 2027. Furthermore, external walls to all 18m+ buildings that are deemed a risk must be remediated by the end of 2029, and all those that are deemed a risk between 11–18m in height must also be remediated or have a completion date by this time.

There are proposed financial and custodial penalties for those associated with buildings that are not addressed within these timeframes.

Effectively, the plan sets a maximum five-year programme for the remediation of the external walls on residential buildings over 11m in height where that external wall is deemed to pose a risk to those who occupy the building. With over 3,000 buildings still to address, there remains much work yet to be done.

The plan does not include internal fire safety works, and it is understood that many residential buildings also need such works. Therefore, these may be included in the second stage of the plan.

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The plan sets out what the government perceives to be the barriers to remediation. These include the reluctance of building owners to progress works, legal claims, lack of funding for social housing providers, a shortage of consultants, and a lack of regulator capacity. I agree with all of these, but in addition, there is the planning process and the fact that many local authorities have now changed their stance so that like-for-like external façades are deemed to require a planning application rather than being lawful development.

Receiving approval for funding from the various funding schemes can often be slow, so the government should also consider how it can speed up that process. Social housing providers will be pleased to hear that additional funding is proposed to be available to them from April 2025 for external wall remediation.

The government acknowledges in the plan that there is still work to do to identify the 11–18m high buildings that require external wall remediation. The plan sets out that “a comprehensive building register” will be created to include the 11–18m buildings.

It is right that we understand and record the construction of our residential buildings. The register will, however, require more resource to create, and allowance for this will need to be made by building owners.

It is evident that the new Government is implementing changes to accelerate remediation, and these will be welcomed by residents and many building owners. There is still much work to do to reduce the risk posed by the UK’s residential multi-occupancy buildings, and the plan proposals relate to England.

Will we therefore see the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland follow with similar acceleration proposals? We wait to see.