Housing Secretary Michael Gove today warned developers that failure to sign up for its cladding remedy proposals would mean ‘consequences’ as he kept up his rhetoric against the industry.
Builders that do not sign up for the safety pledge might be excluded from any more constructing any more houses, Gove said.
The Housing Secretary has been pressuring the building industry to pay for the cost of removing dangerous cladding on the high-rise apartments since January.
Today he announced 35 builders had signed up, pledging £2bn for remedial work on blocks above 11m high.
A further £3bn will come from an expansion of the already announced Building Safety Levy to cover work on blocks above 18m.
Redrow to take £164mln hit after signing high-rise safety pledge
This will also cover buildings where the developer can’t be traced where the work will be carried out said Gove.
“Today marks a significant step towards protecting innocent leaseholders and ensuring those responsible pay to solve the crisis they helped to cause.”
Attention will now switch to cladding and insulation companies to get them to sign up, he said, with a request already sent to the Construction Products Association.
FTSE 100 builders Persimmon, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey have already signed up for the pledge but today share prices of the trio were down between 1.8% and 2.3%.