Leaseholder protections under the Building Safety Act, in plain English

Who do the protections cover?

Two definitions do the heavy lifting, and both are wider than people expect. The building test: Part 5 applies in relevant buildings, broadly those over 11m or 5 storeys, which is a far wider net than the 18m threshold that triggers the gateway regime. The person test: a qualifying lease is, broadly, one that on 14 February 2022 was of the leaseholder's only or principal home, or held within a small portfolio of dwellings. Buy-to-let investors with larger portfolios sit outside the core protections; owner-occupiers and small landlords are inside.

The date matters because the protections attach to the lease as it stood on 14 February 2022 and, having attached, travel with the property when it is sold. The machinery for proving all of this is the certificate exchange: the leaseholder deed of certificate, which evidences qualification, and the landlord certificate, which evidences whether the landlord was responsible for or linked to the defect. Complete them carefully and on time; they are how the abstract protections become concrete numbers in a service charge demand.

What costs are protected?

The Act splits historical safety defect costs into layers. At the top, the cladding layer: costs of remediating the cladding system itself cannot be passed to qualifying leaseholders at all. Below it, other historical safety defects, where Schedule 8 imposes caps on what a qualifying leaseholder can be asked to contribute, in the region of 10,000 pounds outside London and 15,000 pounds in London, spread over ten years, with lower-value properties protected entirely and the contribution dropping to zero where the landlord is, or is linked to, the developer responsible.

Those figures come from the legislation rather than from any discretion of the landlord, and they are ceilings, not targets. Verify the current detail against the Act and the gov.uk guidance before relying on a specific number, because the regulations that implement Schedule 8 carry conditions that turn on the building, the lease and the defect.

Who pays instead?

The Act's answer is: those who built the problem, then those who own it, then industry funding, before leaseholders. Developers have remediation obligations under contract schemes and face remediation contribution orders where they resist. Landlords carry what the caps and bars leave with them. Government funds and the Building Safety Levy, charging new development from 1 October 2026, stand behind the programme. The reallocation was the political core of the Act: the pre-2022 position, in which leaseholders carried six-figure bills for defects they did not create, is what Part 5 exists to end.

What if the building still is not being fixed?

Cost protection without remediation is half a remedy, which is why the First-tier Tribunal can now force the work. A remediation order compels a relevant landlord to remediate specified defects by a specified time. A remediation contribution order makes a landlord, developer or associated company pay for remediation, and the tribunal has shown willingness to look through corporate structures to the companies behind them. The Remediation Improvement Plan launched in April 2026 exists precisely because the pace of fixing has lagged the strength of the legal tools.

For a leaseholder starting from a service charge demand that looks wrong, the practical sequence is: check the building and lease against the definitions above, get the certificate position straight, take free initial advice from LEASE, and treat the tribunal routes as usable tools rather than last resorts. The terms of art, qualifying lease, relevant defect, landlord certificate, are all defined in our glossary; the decisions about a specific building deserve advice on that building.