In September 2025, the Upper Tribunal handed down judgment in the appeal in Almacantar Centre Point Nominee No.1 Ltd v De Valk & Or. The appeal concerned the scope of the service charge protections in Schedule 8 to the Building Safety Act (BSA).
Almacantar is the owner of London’s Centre Point House. The façade requires full replacement due to deterioration in its condition since its original construction in the 1960s.
There is no suggestion that the cladding was a “relevant defect” in the sense that the need for replacement is not related to a building safety risk within the technical meaning of the Act.
The cladding was also installed in the 1960’s, outside the relevant period under the Act, being the 30 years up to 28 June 2022, and so could not have been a relevant defect in any event.
Paragraph 8 of Schedule 8 of the BSA prevents the recovery from leaseholders with qualifying leases of remediation costs of “unsafe” cladding.
The Upper Tribunal agreed with the First-tier Tribunal that paragraph 8 is a stand-alone provision relating to service charge recovery for cladding remediation: the sole requirement is that the cladding should be “unsafe” and there is no limitation on the reasons which might make it so.
This displaces the (perhaps unspoken) previous assumption of many in the industry that the leaseholder protection regime was only engaged when there was a relevant defect ( see section 120 of the BSA).
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal as confirmed by the Upper Tribunal is that this is not the case where the protection claimed is the protection against remediation costs for unsafe cladding. There is no temporal requirement for a cladding system to qualify as unsafe, meaning that qualifying leaseholders may be protected against the cost of remediating unsafe cladding regardless of when it was installed (including cladding systems installed before 1992).
This is yet another instance of the Tribunal acting to give clear effect to the policy of the Act and the intention of Parliament.
Permission has been granted to appeal to Court of Appeal. The hearing is scheduled for 15 October 2026.
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