The Building Safety Fund is a fund of over £5bn that provides grants for the remediation of buildings over 18 metres.
Under existing rules, social housing landlords are only able to access the Building Safety Fund where the costs would otherwise be passed down to leaseholders or threaten the landlord's financial viability.
This restriction has resulted in a mere 10% of the available funding going to social landlords; the remaining 90% has gone to private building owners. This disparity in access has impacted housing associations' ability to remediate defective buildings, improve living conditions for tenants and to invest in new housing. Kate Henderson (Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation) previously condemned this process as 'immoral and unfair'.
In the spending review announcement on 11 June 2025, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a further £1bn investment between 2026-7 and 2029-30 to accelerate the remediation of social housing and that social housing providers will have 'equal access to Government funding'. Thus, it is expected that this will address the current discrepancy in access to remediation funding.
With the G15 earmarking at least £3.6bn for investment into the safety of homes between 2021 to 2036, easier access to Government funding will be a welcome change.
Investment in housing has been a major part of this spending review; other accompanying announcements included an additional £39bn of funding through a new 10-year Affordance Homes Programme, an estimated £6.8bn addition to the economy through planning reform, £2.5bn of low interest loans for social housing providers to boost new development and a further £4.8 bn via private investment to deliver on the Government's house building ambition of 1.5 million more homes.
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