Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 43
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes during this Parliament and expects social housing to be at the heart of the UKs’ housing supply. Against a backdrop of the construction sector reporting workforce shortages (paragraph 20), we asked the NHF how the government’s approach to remediation in the social housing sector was likely to impact the number of social sector homes being developed.74 In both written and oral evidence, the NHF told us that to pay for cladding remediation, housing associations were having to divert funding from building new homes. The NHF told us that the impact in London had been “catastrophic” where, it said, despite facing the greatest housing pressures across the country, affordable housing starts had fallen by 90% last year. It also told us that there were adverse effects on the government’s ability to meet its target for 1.5 million new homes, but also on the cost of temporary accommodation and on homelessness. It told us that if the £3.8 billion that social housing providers were expected to spend on remediating existing buildings were instead to be invested in developing new homes, it could result in an additional 76,000 new homes being built.75
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".