Welsh Building Safety Fund

If you are using this scheme to provide awards of subsidy, you must inform the Subsidy Control Unit – email: scu@gov.wales.

Wales

Welsh Building Safety Fund

Section 60(1) of the Government of Wales Act 2006.

The purpose of the Welsh Building Safety Fund is to provide funding to deliver, at pace, remediation of identified fire safety defects in all in scope buildings in order to ensure the safety, wellbeing and financial security of leaseholders and residents.

The Welsh Building Safety Fund has a number of active funding routes to address specific life-critical fire safety issues in Wales. The proposed subsidy will specifically support leaseholders and residents who are eligible for funding under the following routes:

Retrospective payments for fire safety surveys, fire safety remediation works and the installation (or replacement) of fire alarms.

This support is essentially a compensation payment with the purpose of refunding leaseholders and residents who proactively sought to identify and address fire safety issues in their building prior to the BSP being established.

Buildings covered by the developer's contract:

Where buildings have as-built fire safety defects and the team have been able to identify the developer responsible, a legally binding contract has been signed between those developers and Welsh Ministers. This contract includes a set of Self Remediation Terms (SRTs) covering the works and associated costs to be covered by developers. However, there are certain costs excluded from the SRTs, specifically those costs associated with interim fire safety measures.

Orphan buildings and buildings not covered by the Developer’s Contract:

To address remediation issues in buildings where there is no identified developer, the developer has ceased trading, the building was constructed prior to 1992 or the building is not covered by the developer contract, Welsh Government will fund the necessary remediation of as-built fire safety defects and necessary interim fire safety measures.

The desired outcomes for the scheme are:

• Protection of life from fire related harm
• Remediation of affected buildings to fire safety compliance to at least a tolerable level
• Restoration of public and commercial confidence in the safety and viability of residential buildings of 11 metres or more, and thus reinvigorating that arm of the housing market.

Following the guidance for the UK’s Housing Streamlined Subsidy Scheme, it has been assessed that there is unlikely to be any cumulative advantage from multiple provisions of support relating to projects in different geographical locations. This relates to the difficulty of taking advantages of economies of scale from the procuring of materials and services where construction will take place over a wide geographical area.

Welsh Government

This scheme is solely for support to buy-to-let landlords and property management companies. Awards to private owner-occupiers of eligible buildings are not considered subsidies, and those to social landlords are covered in a different scheme.

Real estate activities.

1 March 2024 to 31 March 2030

£100,000,000

All subsidy awarded under the scheme will be awarded by way of direct grants.

All residential buildings of 11 metres and over in Wales are eligible. Works deemed eligible for support are driven by findings of specialist surveys and will differ for each building. The subsidy is available for the following categories of works (though this list is not meant to be exhaustive):

• External Wall system / Cladding
• Compartmentation (internal / external)
• Fire detection and alarm systems
• Evacuation alert systems
• Fire Suppression Systems

The subsidy will be determined by specialist fire engineer reports, with the scale and cost to remediate each building to the required standard will differ significantly for each building. The team currently estimates a maximum subsidy threshold per enterprise of £500,000, and total budget of £100 million. However, this will be subject to ongoing review and evaluation to ensure it remains fit for purpose. The scheme will operate an intervention rate of up to 100%.

£500,000

For more information about applying for support under this scheme, please contact the team at: buildingsafety@gov.wales

For more information about this scheme’s compliance with the Subsidy Control Act 2022, please contact: