Recommendation 7

The social housing sector is under serious financial pressure, and the Government is asking it to do far too much without sufficient resources. We therefore welcome the progress made towards finding a financial solution to the building safety crisis and the Government’s commitment to exploring ways of exempting social housing providers from the building safety levy. The Government says the Building Safety Fund is available to social housing providers if they can demonstrate that the costs of remediation are unaffordable or present a threat to financial stability, but it is not clear how easily a provider could demonstrate this. Social housing providers must have exactly the same access to funds for building safety remediation as private sector landlords. There must be no discrimination against social housing.