Most leaseholders in tall buildings are protected from cladding costs by law — but very few know whether they qualify, what the caps actually are, or what to check before paying.
If you own a flat in a building above 11 metres (roughly 5 storeys), you may have spent years worrying about a bill for cladding removal or fire safety works that never quite arrives — or does arrive, unexpectedly, through your service charge. The truth is that most leaseholders in this position are protected by law from paying for cladding removal entirely, and have their contribution to other historical safety defects capped. Very few people actually know whether they qualify, what the caps are, or how to make a landlord prove it.
This guide explains exactly who the Building Safety Act 2022 protects, what it doesn’t cover, and the practical steps to take if you’re being asked to pay.
If your building is above 11m (or 5 storeys) and the flat was your main home, or you owned no more than 3 UK residential properties, as of 14 February 2022, you likely qualify. You pay nothing for cladding removal. Contributions to other historical defects are capped at £15,000 in Greater London and £10,000 elsewhere. Your landlord must prove you owe money before asking you to pay.
The protections in the Building Safety Act 2022 don’t apply automatically to every leaseholder — they apply specifically to qualifying leaseholders, defined by a test applied as at 14 February 2022 (the date the relevant provisions were announced, not when they came into force):
If you bought your flat after 14 February 2022, you can still qualify — the test looks at whether the previous owner would have qualified, and that protection generally transfers to you as the new leaseholder. This surprises a lot of recent buyers who assume the protections only apply to people who owned the flat at the time of the announcement.
If you're a qualifying leaseholder, you cannot be charged anything — not a capped amount, not a contribution, nothing — for the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding itself. This is an absolute protection, not a capped one. Landlords and freeholders must find another route to fund this work: pursuing the original developer, claiming from government remediation schemes, or absorbing the cost themselves.
For other historical building safety defects — not cladding itself, but things like missing fire breaks, defective fire doors, or other issues identified during a Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls — qualifying leaseholders' contributions are capped, not eliminated:
| Location | Maximum Total Contribution |
|---|---|
| Greater London | £15,000 |
| Outside Greater London | £10,000 |
This is a lifetime cap, not an annual one — once you've paid up to the cap across all relevant works, you cannot be charged more for historical building safety defects, regardless of how many further issues are later identified in the same building.
Before a landlord can ask a qualifying leaseholder to contribute anything toward building safety costs, they must first provide a formal landlord's certificate confirming the leaseholder's qualifying status and setting out how the costs have been calculated against the cap. If your landlord hasn't provided this certificate and is nonetheless demanding payment through your service charge, that demand may not be valid — this is one of the first things to check before paying anything.
Landlords are also required to actively pursue the parties actually responsible — developers, contractors, or manufacturers — before turning to leaseholders at all. The Building Safety Act created a "cascade" of liability specifically to keep leaseholders at the very end of the queue, not the start of it.
The government publishes a free Leaseholder Protections Checker on GOV.UK, which walks through your specific circumstances — building height, ownership history, and the date you bought — to give an indication of whether you qualify. It's worth running through this yourself before relying on what a managing agent or freeholder tells you, since misapplication of these rules (sometimes genuine confusion, sometimes not) remains common industry-wide.
If you don't meet the qualifying test — commonly because you owned more than 3 UK residential properties, or your building falls below the height threshold — you don't get the automatic protections above, but you're not necessarily on the hook for the full cost either. Several other routes may still apply:
The caps above cover the cost of the remediation work itself — but many buildings awaiting remediation also carry ongoing interim costs, like waking watch patrols or temporary fire alarm systems, charged through the service charge in the meantime. These interim costs sit in a genuinely different, less clearly protected category, and are common enough that we've covered them in a dedicated guide: Waking Watch and Interim Safety Costs.
Consider a leaseholder in a 15-storey London block built in 2015, discovered to have unsafe cladding in 2021. They bought the flat in 2023 as their only home. Because the previous owner would have qualified (main home, building over 11m), this leaseholder inherits qualifying status despite buying after the February 2022 cut-off. The freeholder identifies £40,000 of cladding removal costs and a further £22,000 of associated fire-safety works (fire doors, compartmentation) across the building, split between 40 flats.
The cladding removal costs: this leaseholder pays nothing toward it, regardless of their individual share. For the £22,000 of other works, their proportional share might come to roughly £550 — comfortably under the £15,000 London cap, so they pay their calculated share in full. If, over subsequent years, further historical defects are identified and their cumulative contribution approached £15,000, further demands beyond that point could not lawfully be enforced against them.
In 2026, the Court of Appeal ruled on two significant test cases — Hippersley Point in Abbey Wood and East Village Estate in Stratford — confirming that building owners and developers cannot recover fire safety remediation costs from leaseholders for defects identified before the Building Safety Act 2022 came into force, where those defects stem from developer or building-owner failures. This closed off an argument some freeholders had been using to sidestep the Act's protections, and strengthens the position of leaseholders challenging historical cost demands.
A qualifying leaseholder is someone whose building is at least 11 metres tall or 5 storeys, and where, as of 14 February 2022, the flat was their main home or they owned no more than 3 UK residential properties in total. Buyers who purchased after this date can still qualify if the previous owner would have.
No. Qualifying leaseholders pay nothing for the removal and replacement of unsafe cladding itself. This is an absolute protection under the Building Safety Act 2022, not a capped contribution.
Qualifying leaseholders' contributions to other historical building safety defects, beyond cladding itself, are capped at £15,000 in Greater London and £10,000 elsewhere. This is a lifetime cap covering all such works combined.
Ask your landlord for the formal landlord's certificate confirming your qualifying status and how any costs were calculated against the cap. Landlords must also demonstrate they've pursued responsible parties like developers before asking leaseholders to contribute.
Buildings under 11 metres generally fall outside the core Building Safety Act protections, but a new targeted funding scheme for lower-rise buildings with life-critical cladding defects opened for applications in August 2026. See our guide to current cladding funding schemes.
Part of our guide to cladding costs and building safety for UK leaseholders.
Take the Quiz: Am I Qualifying? →Funding Schemes 2026 →Waking Watch Costs →Get your instant lease extension estimate using official RICS rates.
Calculate Now →This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Building safety law is complex and fact-specific — always check your building's specific circumstances with a specialist solicitor.
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