Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 39
17th Report - The Remediation of Dangerous Cladding
Published 21 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The Remediation of Dangerous Cladding All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The NAO report found that previous attempts by MHCLG to accelerate remediation resulted in it relaxing some of its safeguards and the taxpayer being exposed to an increased risk of fraud. This included moving from making payments in arrears to making up–front payments of between 30% and 80%.65 We asked MHCLG whether it should have been obvious that relaxing funding criteria as dramatically as it did in 2020 would lead to increased fraud, noting that one potential loss of over £500,000 had already been identified. MHCLG told us that the priority for the early schemes had been to get funding out as quickly. It stressed that the system was never without checks at all, and that there were, for example, checks by experts around the scope of the work. It explained that it had made a series of changes over the last few years in response to a fraud risk assessment by the Government Internal Audit Agency, including benchmarking costs and a reduction in single–tender actions.66
From: Public Accounts Committee, 17th Report - The Remediation of Dangerous Cladding (HC 362), 21 March 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Seventeenth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026.
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Seventeenth report from Session 2024-25
Published 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations on the remediation of dangerous cladding, with target dates between summer and December 2025, but disagrees with the recommendation on construction manufacturers paying a share of remediation costs.
- On the Remediation Acceleration Plan, the government agrees to update the Committee in Autumn 2025. It says it "has not seen significant evidence that non-cladding defects are slowing down remediation" but is committed to removing blockers.
- On construction manufacturers paying a share of remediation costs, the government disagrees. It says it is consulting on redress routes in the Construction Products Reform Green Paper and that leaseholders and tenants are protected from the cost of cladding remediation.
- The government will publish latest building number estimates "by the summer", but the timing of cost and completion date estimates "will depend on the outcome of the forthcoming Spending Review".
- On insurance, the government agrees and will share an update on progress by the end of 2025. It is gathering data on premiums and is considering whether government "might support industry to reduce fire related liabilities".