Cladding Bill: what the new duty to fix unsafe walls means for blocks run by their own company

What happened

On 27 October 2026 the House of Commons gave a second reading to the Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill, which was introduced on 14 October. The Bill now goes to committee stage. It applies to England.

On the same day the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced it would go further than the Bill as introduced. Its release says the government plans to:

• give new funding towards internal, high-risk and high-cost fire safety defects in collectively owned and enfranchised buildings, where there is no separate freeholder and so the leaseholder protections in the Building Safety Act 2022 do not apply;
• look at how to protect people who bought a flat as their only or main home but missed out because of the previous owner’s circumstances on 14 February 2022;
• raise the limit for protection from non-cladding defect costs from three properties owned on that date to six.

The release says the details of eligibility and funding will be added to the Bill during its passage or published alongside it. In the debate, the Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, said she would table amendments to expand protection from three to six properties.

What it means for your building

The Bill creates a legal duty to assess, mitigate and remediate unsafe external walls on multi-occupied residential buildings in England that are over 11 metres or have at least five storeys and were completed before 28 June 2022. The government’s guide says it covers private and social buildings, “including enfranchised and commonhold buildings”. Buildings under the developer remediation contract are excluded.

The duty falls on the “responsible entity”: whoever has the repairing obligation for the building. The guide says this may include freeholders, right to manage companies and resident management companies. So if your block is run by its own company and is in scope, the company may be the one with the duty, not someone else.

Under the Bill as described in the guide, a responsible entity would need to:

• make sure the building has had a fire risk appraisal of external walls (FRAEW) where its fire risk assessment recommends one, by 12 months after Royal Assent (an assessment done since 16 May 2022 that met the rules at the time does not need repeating);
• where the FRAEW recommends work, publish a Remediation Compliance Plan by 15 months after Royal Assent, share it with residents and leaseholders, and name the director responsible for compliance;
• carry out the recommended work as soon as reasonably practicable.

Penalties for deliberate failure can reach £500,000, and a director can be prosecuted where a company’s failure is due to their consent, connivance or neglect. The guide also says regulators must have regard to statutory guidance before fining a leaseholder-controlled company, that there is a “reasonable excuse” defence for delays outside your control, and that enforcement is aimed at persistent inaction rather than resident-led companies taking reasonable steps. Separately, the Bill would create a register of all residential buildings of 11 to 18 metres in England.

For a block owned by its leaseholders, the funding announcement matters most: these are the buildings that can face the biggest bills today, because there is no separate freeholder to pass the cost to. Nothing has changed yet, and the amount and the rules for the new funding have not been published.

What to do now

• Check whether your building is in scope: its height or number of storeys, its completion date, and whether your company holds the repairing obligation under the leases.
• Find your current fire risk assessment and any FRAEW, and note their dates. If there is none, ask your fire risk assessor whether one is recommended.
• If remediation is likely, look at the government funding schemes now (for example the Cladding Safety Scheme) rather than waiting for the Bill.
• Agree at a board meeting which director would take responsibility for building safety, and minute it.
• Watch the Bill’s committee stage for the amendments on leaseholder-owned buildings. We will report them.

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether your building qualifies depends on its facts and your leases.

How Freeholdpilot helps

Freeholdpilot keeps the board’s fire risk assessments, FRAEWs and leases in one document store, puts review dates on the calendar of legal deadlines, and records board decisions and votes, so the company can show what it has done and when.