Residential developers are demanding more clarity over Michael Gove’s plans to extend the Building Safety Levy.
Earlier this year the levelling up secretary announced that as well as paying a development tax put in place by his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, residential developers would sign a pledge committing them to paying for repairs to any buildings they had built in the past 30 years. In total those commitments come to around £5bn.
But in addition, Gove said, the “industry will also pay up to a further £3bn through an expansion to the Building Safety Levy”, which will fix fire safety issues at “orphan” buildings, whose original owners cannot be traced.
This has led to some concern that this will add a further £3bn to the bill.
Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, has written to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to complain that handing developers a further levy is not “fair or justified”. It was time to “pursue other actors in the complex ecosystem of products, regulations and development”, he said.
Baseley said the housing secretary’s response “cannot merely be to pursue the same industry again and again, however much of an easy target it is perceived to be”.
