Credit: MHCLG
The government has postponed the introduction of its Building Safety Levy to help pay for cladding remediation works on high-rise residential blocks.
In her Remediation Acceleration Plan, published last December, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced that the levy would come into effect in autumn 2025.
However, in a written ministerial statement to the House of Commons on 24 March, building safety minister Alex Norris said the levy’s implementation would be pushed back to autumn 2026. Under the new timetable, the levy regulations will be laid in parliament later this year.
The postponement will give councils, the Building Safety Regulator, and Registered Building Control approvers a further 12 months to prepare, Norris said.
It will also give housing developers, who will pay the levy, more time to factor these costs into their plans.
Norris also announced that the rate of the levy will be linked to house prices in the council area where the development is located, in a bid to mitigate the impact on housing supply.
In addition, works on brownfield sites will qualify for a 50% discount on the standard rate of the levy, which is being applied to residential developers to help pay for remediating unsafe cladding.
