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The Government has today announced a series of measures that are intended to ensure the construction industry takes collective responsibility for historic building fire safety defects. These measures, which will to contribute towards the funding of a new £3.5billion Government scheme to facilitate the remediation of unsafe ACM cladding, include:
- a new £2billion levy on "large property developers" which will be collected via taxation over 10 years from 2022; and
- an additional levy to be placed on developers seeking planning permission for high-rise buildings (the "Gateway to Developer Levy") which will be implemented through the Building Safety Bill currently before Parliament.
While the proposed levies are likely to have strong public backing, the announcement did not set out any details of the type of high-rise buildings to be subject to the Gateway to Developer Levy or which developers will be subject to the new tax, details about tax brackets or how much firms could be charged. As such developers currently can have no certainty over how the new levies will affect their business.
A new tax on the residential development sector will be introduced in 2022 to help pay for combustible-material remediation on tower blocks. The tax, which will apply to the “largest property developers”, will raise “at least £2bn over a decade”, according to housing secretary Robert Jenrick, who announced the scheme today. Jenrick said the levy would “make the industry pay for its faults of the past”. He added: “The tax will ensure the largest property developers make a fair contribution to the remediation programme in relation to the money they make from residential property, reflecting the benefit that they will derive from restoring confidence to the UK housing market.”
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