It might be no surprise to some to know that there are problems with the procedures created by The Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (England) Regulations 2022 and The Building Safety (Leaseholder Protections) (Information etc) (England) Regulations 2022, both of which came into force in July 2022 under the Building Safety Act 2022 (the Act).

These relate to historical safety defects in buildings at least 5 storeys or 11 metres high.

Some of those practical and procedural difficulties are now to be dealt with by draft Regulations laid before Parliament yesterday (13 June 2022), using powers in the Act to make amendments to the original regulations.

The types of fixes put in place by the draft Regulations are:

• Include further definitions;
• A number of amendments intended to make the process for recovering amounts from other landlords work properly, under various paragraphs of Schedule 8 of the Act;
• Add the Homes and Communities Agency (Homes England) as an interested person who may apply for a remediation order under section 123 of the Act;
• Include a further trigger for providing a landlord’s certificate;
• Make significant changes to the form and content of the landlord’s certificate;
• Prescribe the circumstances when particular evidence need not be provided with the landlord’s certificate; and
• Correct technical errors and numbering anomalies.

The new form and content of the landlord’s certificate definitely fix some of the issues we have identified when advising clients about completion – for example, including a tick box to confirm the landlord is an excluded landlord for the purposes of the questions regarding net worth. It is encouraging to see that these initial teething problems (as is probably inevitable with a large and complex piece of new legislation) are being addressed by the Government.

Once the amendment Regulations are made, which is likely to be soon, they are due to come into force on the following day. Landlords, therefore, need to stay up to date in order to remain compliant: particularly noting the updated version of the landlord’s certificate that will need to be provided to allow recovery of service charges, bearing in mind the very tight timescales around providing that and sanctions for non-compliance.

If your organisation would like any help with recognising whether their buildings where there may be historical safety defects fall within the regime, and how to navigate the complex requirements and provisions of the Act - perhaps you’re even starting to lose it without a fix - please do get in touch with our team.