First announced in December 2024, the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill was finally introduced to Parliament on 14 October 2026. The Bill reflects the government's view that remediation of unsafe buildings is not taking place fast enough. The accompanying guidance issued by the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) makes it clear that the reforms are directed at ensuring that residential buildings with unsafe cladding are identified, assessed, and remediated more quickly, with significant new obligations placed on building owners and other parties with repairing responsibilities.
As currently drafted, the Bill will add another 120 pages of building safety legislation to the statute books and that is without the additional Statutory Instruments (SIs) that will be needed to bring its provisions into force. Much of the content has been trailed in the Remediation Action Plan, the July 2025 Update and the King's Speech but we now have more detail on how those objectives might be achieved. Obviously, the provisions may change as the Bill progresses through Parliament.
Four stated objectives of the Bill
The Bill's objectives are expressed to be to:
- Create certainty of which buildings require cladding remediation and to what standard
- Give regulators the powers they need to hold the worst blockers to account, ensuring those responsible for fixing historic and ongoing failures do so more quickly
- Make the companies that made unsafe building products contribute to fix the problems they caused
- Ensure all residents have a route to remediation, and that no building is left behind
Key changes that may be introduced
- New legal duty to remediate
A new clear statutory duty to remediate will be created by the Bill where a fire risk assessment of external walls (FRAEW) has made recommendations as to remediation works. This is one of a number of new duties which will come into force two months after Royal Assent in respect of "Chapter 1" buildings (multi-occupied residential buildings in England that are either over 11 metres in height or comprise at least five storeys and were completed before 28 June 2022).
The Bill does not set a specific time frame within which works must be completed. The Bill simply states that each required remediation step must be taken "as soon as reasonably practicable". What may be considered ‘required remediation steps’ and ‘tolerable remediation’ for the purpose of complying with the duty to remediate will be set out in regulations which will come into force alongside the new legal duties.
The duty will generally fall on the party with the relevant repairing obligation, referred to in the Bill as the "responsible entity". This may include a freeholder, superior leaseholder, resident management company, or right to manage company depending on the ownership structure. It will apply to private and social sector housing.
Local authorities, fire, and rescue authorities, and the Building Safety Regulator will have a corresponding duty to enforce the legal duty to remediate. Buildings already subject to the Developer Remediation Contract regime are to be excluded because equivalent requirements are already in place.
There will also be a new duty to mitigate. The responsible entity would be required to implement recommended interim measures in relation to the external walls "as soon as reasonably practicable".
- Mandatory assessment requirements
The government is concerned that a significant number of buildings with unsafe cladding, particularly those between 11-18m, remain unidentified. As a first step in the new regime, the Bill will introduce a statutory duty on the responsible entity to assess the external walls of Chapter 1 buildings for fire safety risks so that unsafe buildings are identified and the remediation work needed is established. The assessment deadline is to be 12 months after Royal Assent.
Where recommended by a fire risk assessment, a FRAEW would need to be commissioned. Importantly, the Bill enables secondary legislation to prescribe the requirements for a compliant assessment, including by reference to a BSI standard or similar document. The Guide suggests that use of PAS 9980 will be made mandatory. The precise standard, including whether PAS 9980 will be specified, will depend on the regulations passed but we can expect a clear, standardised approach to assessing external walls.
Where a building has been assessed between 16 May 2022 (when the Fire Safety Act 2021 came into force) and the Bill coming into force, the assessment will not need to be repeated if it complied with the requirements in force at the time.
- Remediation compliance plan
Where a responsible entity is under a duty to remediate it will also be under a duty to prepare and disseminate a Remediation Compliance Plan. The plan must identify the remediation steps the responsible entity will take, the proposed timetable and, where the responsible entity is a company, the plan must also identify the director responsible for ensuring compliance with remediation duties, details of any beneficial owners, and information about the responsible entity’s portfolio and wider corporate group.
The Remediation Compliance Plan must be prepared and disseminated within 15 months of Royal Assent. It must be published on the responsible entity's website and proactively shared with residents and leaseholders. There is also an express duty to revise and re-disseminate the Plan where alternative remediation recommendations are subsequently received. Failure to publish will result in substantial financial penalties that continue to accrue until the plan is produced.
- Remediation backstop
Where duty holders have failed to remediate, the Bill will introduce a Remediation Backstop which will act as a final safety net. This will allow Homes England or local authorities to undertake works under a Remediation Management Order made by the First-Tier Tribunal, after first serving a Remediation Notice on the duty-holder. A Remediation Management Order will allow the remediation authority to do anything that the duty-holder could ordinarily do for the purpose of assessing and remediating the external walls. Funding will initially be available from the government remediation schemes, but the duty-holder will ultimately be responsible for paying the cost of remediation work.
- New sanctions and enforcement risks
The Bill substantially strengthens enforcement powers available to regulators marking a move towards a more interventionist enforcement model. Failure to assess, mitigate or remediate, without reasonable excuse, will constitute a criminal offence which may result in imprisonment and/or a fine. As an alternative to prosecution, regulators may issue financial penalties which in the case of a failure to mitigate or remediate can be up to £500,000. Multiple penalties may be awarded for the same failure provided they relate to different periods of time. Directors of a responsible entity may face criminal prosecution where the failure to meet remediation duties is due to the consent, connivence or neglect of the director. Financial penalties can also be imposed for failure to prepare or revise a Remediation Compliance Plan.
The Building Safety Regulator, local authorities and fire and rescue authorities will all have enforcement responsibilities. Although the government emphasises that sanctions are aimed at persistent non-compliance rather than responsible owners who are making genuine progress, the overall direction of travel is clear: remediation delays will become increasingly difficult to justify.
- FRAEW audits and regulatory oversight
A further notable development is the introduction of mandatory audits of FRAEWs. All assessments recommending mitigation or remediation works must be submitted for audit by Homes England by the assessment deadline. Homes England will also be empowered to audit a proportion of assessments that conclude no works are required. The aim is to improve consistency and quality across the sector.
- Obstruction offence
The Bill will create a new offence where someone unreasonably obstructs any person who is lawfully assessing or fixing a building with serious external fire safety risks. Obstruction could involve refusing access, refusing permission to carry out works or raising unreasonable disputes about the scope of the remediation works. It could apply where a responsible entity was trying to carry out its legal duty to remediate but also where a developer is attempting to complete works in accordance with the Developer Remediation contract, a third party has taken on responsibility for remediation or a remediation authority is using powers under the new Remediation Backstop.
- Register of medium-rise buildings
A further key reform is the creation of a register for residential buildings between 11 and 18 metres in height or which have at least 5 but fewer than 7 storeys. This will be similar to the current register for higher risk buildings and is intended to create greater visibility of potentially affected buildings and reduce the number of properties that have historically fallen outside formal remediation programmes.
- Group corporate structures - controlling company liability
The Bill will also introduce group accountability provisions so that those with real control over a building cannot avoid responsibility though complex ownership arrangements. A regulator will be able to serve a penal notice for certain offences (failure to remediate, obstruction and costs for a Remediation Management Order) on both the corporate responsible entity and any companies that exercise any control over it. As with Building Liability Orders, this power is an incursion on the general principles of corporate limited liability. The government acknowledges in the Guidance that these powers are far reaching and states that they are to "only be used in the most egregious cases".
- Construction product manufacturers
An integral part of the Bill are the provisions relating to construction product manufacturers. Section 149 of the Building Safety Act 2022 was intended to provide a route for parties to recover remediation costs from manufacturers where a construction product contributed to a dwelling becoming unfit for habitation. However, it has not worked as intended and, as a consequence, those who have acted to remediate unsafe buildings have frequently had to bear the costs themselves without any contribution from the product manufacturers.
The Bill will make it easier to recover remediation costs by simplifying the statutory conditions of section 149. Liability will turn on whether a product was unsafe or whether there was misleading conduct. The causation test will also be simplified so that it will be enough to show that a product made more than a trivial contribution to a building being unsafe. And the pool of parties who can bring claims directly against manufacturers is expanded to include developers. Building Liability Orders will apply to section 149 claims, allowing liability to be extended to associated companies where it is just and equitable. These changes are intended to ensure that responsibility for remediation is shared more fairly. The changes will apply to new claims and cases which are already underway when the provisions come into force, two months after Royal Assent.
- Limitation
The Bill clarifies that no limitation period will apply to Remediation Orders, Remediation Contribution Orders, and Building Liability Orders
- Other provisions
The Bill is wide-ranging in the provisions it introduces and also amends a number of existing statutes, most notably the Building Safety Act 2022. Other provisions include:
- Strengthened regulatory co-operation
- Powers to obtain beneficial ownership information
- Civil penalties of up to £500,000 for non-compliance with Remediation Orders
- Imposing trust status on monies paid under a Remediation Contribution Order
- Clearer legal routes for leaseholder to take control of the building’s management, if a building ends up with no effective owner or responsible entity, so that essential maintenance and safety works can continue
- Timescale
The majority of the provisions including the duty to assess, mitigate and remediate will come into force two months after Royal Assent. It is difficult to predict when that will be, but Royal Assent is likely to be in the first half of 2027. The assessment deadline is 12 months after that. It is worth bearing in mind that the current government target is for all residential buildings over 11 metres with unsafe cladding to have either been remediated or have a confirmed completion date by the end of 2029.
Comment
For the construction sector, the Bill represents one of the most significant building safety developments since the Building Safety Act 2022. For those operating across the construction sector, including developers, contractors, consultants, product manufacturers, building owners, and investors, the Bill is likely to have significant commercial and legal implications.
Although we do not anticipate any drastic amendments to the Bill, there are no guarantees that all of these provisions will pass into law. We also need to wait to see the secondary legislation which will provide further operational detail. However, the direction of travel is clear. Government policy is moving away from reliance on voluntary remediation commitments and towards a statutory framework built around mandatory assessment, prescribed remediation planning, and active regulatory supervision.
The purpose of the Bill is stated to be to drive action where responsible entities are failing to remediate unsafe cladding, not to penalise those who are making genuine efforts to comply. The provisions should help to progress the remediation of buildings with unsafe cladding but whether the combined effect of the provisions results in a fairer distribution of responsibility for remediation costs remains to be seen.
We will be monitoring the progress of the Bill and will issue further updates as developments arise.
