Urban Splash ordered to pay £46.5m for fire safety works on seven Manchester blocks

What happened

On 5 November 2026 the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) published its decision on applications by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government for remediation contribution orders over seven high-rise residential buildings in Manchester developed by Urban Splash Limited between about 2000 and 2008: Burton Place, Chips Building, Christabel House, Emmeline House, Moho Building, Sylvia House and The Box Works.

The tribunal says fire safety work on the seven buildings has been completed at a cost of more than £60 million, of which about £51.5 million came from the government’s Building Safety Fund. It found that each building had relevant defects, mainly combinations of combustible materials, ineffective cavity barriers and fire-stopping, and failures of compartmentation, and that £60,638,548 including VAT was reasonably incurred or to be incurred.

It ordered Urban Splash Limited, Urban Splash Developments Limited, Urban Splash Group Holdings Limited, Urban Splash Work Limited and Stubbs Mill LLP to pay a total of £46,500,650, jointly and severally. It made no orders against four other respondents, including two investment companies and two parts of a residential investment fund, finding it was not just and equitable to do so. The tribunal also reduced the Building Safety Fund costs the developer must repay by 10% to reflect government failings identified by the Hackitt Review and the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, saying this was not an apportionment of blame. The hearings ran from April to July 2026. The developer disputed the extent of the defects and argued that public funding had led to more expensive work than needed; the tribunal rejected that argument. Richard Waite reported the decision for The Architects’ Journal.

What it means for your building

This is the government using the Building Safety Act to recover public money from a developer, but one detail matters for resident-run blocks. At Moho Building the management company had paid for some of the work itself, outside the fund. The tribunal ordered £741,594 to be paid directly to Moho Management Company Ltd, even though the government brought the case. It also said waking watch costs it excluded for lack of evidence could still be claimed by “another person with standing”.

The law says a remediation contribution order can be sought by anyone with “a legal or equitable interest in the relevant building or any part of it”, which includes leaseholders. Whether a management company has such an interest depends on its leases and title, so take advice. A relevant building is one in England at least 11 metres high or with at least five storeys and at least two homes. The order can cover the cost of works, expert reports and, in some cases, temporary accommodation.

There is an important limit for blocks run by their own leaseholders. Section 117 of the Act excludes buildings where the leaseholders have bought the freehold through collective enfranchisement or the right of first refusal, buildings whose freehold is otherwise leaseholder owned under the regulations, and commonhold. If your freehold company bought the freehold that way, your building is probably outside this route. This is the gap the government has promised to address with new funding for collectively owned blocks in the cladding Bill, which we covered here.

The decision also shows what the tribunal looked at: whether the work was a reasonable professional response to the defects, not the cheapest possible scheme. Rising costs at Burton Place (from about £9 million to almost £23 million) and Moho (from about £9.9 million to over £18 million) were accepted because opening-up revealed further defects, and the developer did not prove a cheaper scheme that would have worked. Good records of investigations, tenders and cost reviews carried weight.

The tribunal noted Urban Splash Limited’s present insolvency, which is one reason it made the five respondents jointly liable. Being granted an order is not the same as being paid.

What to do now

• If your company has paid, or is paying, for fire safety work on a building in England over 11 metres, check first who owns the freehold and how it was acquired. Then ask a solicitor whether a remediation contribution order against the developer, a former landlord or an associated company may be possible.
• Keep every document: fire risk assessments, FRAEWs, opening-up reports, tenders, contracts, invoices and minutes approving the spend. The tribunal relied on records like these.
• Check whether the work is or was funded by the Building Safety Fund or the Cladding Safety Scheme, and record which costs the company paid itself.
• Keep waking watch and other interim costs evidenced separately, with invoices and dates.

This is general information, not legal advice. Whether an order is possible depends on your building and its history.

How Freeholdpilot helps

Freeholdpilot keeps the company’s fire risk assessments, survey reports, contracts and invoices in one document store, records board decisions and votes, and logs the steps in major works, so the board has the paper trail a tribunal will ask for.