Cladding, Building Safety and Leasehold Insurance UK

Introduction

For leaseholders in affected multi-storey residential buildings, buildings insurance has become a genuinely significant financial issue in a way that wasn't widely understood before 2017. Following the Grenfell Tower fire, wider scrutiny of external wall construction across the UK identified a substantial number of buildings with cladding and insulation systems that raised fire safety concerns, and this has had a direct, sometimes severe, effect on how insurers price the buildings insurance covering these blocks.

This guide explains how cladding and wider building safety issues connect to buildings insurance pricing, what the Building Safety Act 2022 does and does not protect leaseholders from, and what genuine options exist if you're affected. This is a complex and evolving area involving building-specific technical assessments and legal protections, so this guide provides general educational information rather than advice on your specific building or lease. It complements our guides on leasehold flat insurance and landlord insurance.

Key Terms Explained

EWS1 Form

External Wall System form, a standardised document recording the result of a fire safety assessment of a building's external walls, including cladding, insulation, balconies and fire breaks.

Building Safety Act 2022

UK legislation creating a new building safety framework, including a Building Safety Regulator and specific leaseholder protections for certain historical remediation costs.

Qualifying Lease

A long lease of a dwelling in a relevant building meeting specific criteria under the Building Safety Act 2022, relevant to eligibility for certain remediation cost protections.

Higher-Risk Building

A classification under the Building Safety Act, broadly covering certain residential buildings of 18 metres or more in height, subject to additional ongoing safety duties.

Waking Watch

A temporary fire safety measure involving trained personnel patrolling a building to identify and respond to fire risk while remediation work is planned or carried out.

Remediation

The process of removing or replacing unsafe cladding or other external wall materials to address identified fire safety risks.

Background: Why This Became an Issue

Following the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, government-led and industry reviews examined external wall systems across a large number of UK residential buildings, identifying many with cladding, insulation or other components that didn't meet the fire safety standards now expected.

A Widescale, Building-by-Building Problem

Because the issue affects individual buildings differently depending on their specific construction, height and materials used, there's no single, uniform answer to whether a given building is affected. Two buildings that look similar from the outside can have entirely different external wall construction and risk profiles.

An Evolving Regulatory Response

The response to this issue, including the EWS1 assessment process and the Building Safety Act 2022, has developed and been refined over several years, and continues to evolve, including updated industry guidance published as recently as 2026 on when an EWS1 is genuinely required.

What an EWS1 Assessment Involves

The EWS1 form was introduced in December 2019 by RICS, UK Finance and the Building Societies Association, specifically to give mortgage lenders, and by extension leaseholders and buyers, a standardised way of understanding a building's external wall fire safety position.

What It Assesses

An EWS1 assessment covers the building's external wall construction, including cladding, insulation, balconies and fire breaks, carried out by a suitably qualified fire safety professional, resulting in a rating that broadly indicates whether remediation work is required.

When It's Generally Required

As of 2026, buildings over 18 metres generally require an EWS1 where cladding, balconies or rendered insulation are present. Buildings between 11 and 18 metres typically only require one where specific risk factors are identified, and buildings under 11 metres are not generally required to have one, reflecting updated industry guidance that has narrowed the scope of routine EWS1 requirements over time compared with the early years of the process.

Why This Matters for Insurance

The outcome of an EWS1 assessment, or the absence of one where required, feeds directly into how insurers understand and price the fire risk associated with a building, making it a central document in understanding why a specific building's buildings insurance may have changed.

How Cladding Status Affects Buildings Insurance

Insurers price buildings insurance based on their assessment of a property's risk, and identified cladding or external wall safety concerns are a factor insurers can and do take into account.

Insurers Reassess Risk When New Information Emerges

Where a review identifies potentially combustible cladding or other external wall safety concerns, insurers may reassess the fire risk associated with the building, which can lead to a higher premium reflecting that updated risk assessment, in the same way any other identified risk factor would affect pricing.

The Scale Seen During the Height of the Issue

In the years following Grenfell, some affected leaseholders saw genuinely dramatic increases, with reports around January 2021 of some leaseholders paying over £3,000 a year each for buildings insurance, with certain buildings seeing increases exceeding 1,000% compared with pre-2017 costs. These figures illustrate the scale the issue reached at its most severe, though the position for any individual building today depends on its own remediation and assessment history since then.

Remediation Can Improve the Position Over Time

Where a building completes remediation work and receives an updated, more favourable EWS1 or equivalent safety assessment, this can, over time, be reflected in more favourable insurance pricing, since the underlying risk the insurer is pricing has genuinely changed.

Why This Reaches Leaseholders Through Service Charges

Understanding how buildings insurance cost changes actually reach individual leaseholders is an important part of the picture.

The Freeholder Typically Arranges Buildings Insurance

In most leasehold blocks, the freeholder or their managing agent arranges buildings insurance covering the structure and communal areas, then recovers the cost from leaseholders through the service charge, rather than individual leaseholders each holding their own buildings policy.

Increased Premiums Flow Through as Higher Service Charges

When the buildings insurance premium rises, whether due to cladding-related risk or any other factor, this cost is typically passed on to leaseholders as part of their service charge, which is how many leaseholders first became aware of the scale of the issue affecting their building.

Your Right to an Explanation

According to the Financial Conduct Authority's own published guidance, if your service charge increases due to higher buildings insurance costs, you can ask your property managing agent for an explanation of the additional cost, and where the agent is FCA-regulated, they're expected to deal with such requests reasonably.

The Building Safety Act 2022 and Leaseholder Protections

The Building Safety Act 2022 introduced a significant new legal framework in response to the wider building safety crisis, including specific protections for certain leaseholders.

A New Regulatory Framework

The Act established a Building Safety Regulator with oversight of higher-risk buildings, generally those of 18 metres or more, alongside new ongoing safety duties for those responsible for managing such buildings.

Remediation Cost Protections for Qualifying Leaseholders

The Act introduced financial protections capping certain historical remediation costs that can be passed to qualifying leaseholders, intended to prevent leaseholders bearing the full cost of fixing historical building safety defects they had no responsibility for creating.

Qualifying Leases and the Deed of Certificate

Whether a specific lease qualifies for these protections depends on meeting criteria set out in the Act, and a Deed of Certificate can provide evidence that a particular lease meets the qualifying criteria, though establishing this can be a genuinely complex, building- and lease-specific exercise.

What the Act's Protections Do Not Cover

This is one of the most important, and most commonly misunderstood, distinctions in this whole area.

Remediation Costs vs Ongoing Insurance Premiums

The Building Safety Act's leaseholder protections are specifically targeted at certain historical remediation costs, meaning the cost of actually fixing identified building safety defects. They are not the same thing as, and do not automatically cap, ongoing buildings insurance premiums, which can remain elevated even where remediation cost protections apply.

Interim Measures Like Waking Watch

Similarly, interim safety measures such as waking watch, along with related costs like EWS1 assessment fees, generally fall outside the specific remediation cost protections and can continue to reach leaseholders through their service charge while a building awaits or undergoes remediation.

Why This Distinction Matters

Leaseholders sometimes assume that because remediation cost protections exist, their overall service charge burden related to building safety is fully protected. In practice, insurance and interim measure costs can remain a genuine, ongoing financial burden even where remediation cost protections successfully apply.

Waking Watch and Interim Measures

Where remediation hasn't yet been completed, buildings are sometimes required to have interim fire safety measures in place, which carry their own significant costs.

What Waking Watch Involves

Waking watch involves trained personnel patrolling a building around the clock to identify and respond to fire risk while permanent remediation is planned or carried out, intended as a temporary measure rather than a long-term solution.

The Scale of the Cost

Waking watch costs have been reported in the range of roughly £8,000 to £25,000 per month for an affected building, a cost typically shared across the building's leaseholders through the service charge, on top of any increased buildings insurance premium.

Alternatives to Waking Watch

In some cases, installing a common fire alarm system can allow a building to move away from waking watch, potentially reducing ongoing costs, though whether this is suitable depends on the specific building's fire strategy and should be assessed by qualified fire safety professionals.

What Leaseholders Can Genuinely Do

While this is a genuinely difficult area, there are practical, general steps worth being aware of.

Request a Clear Breakdown From Your Managing Agent

Ask your managing agent for a clear, itemised explanation of what's driving your service charge, including how much relates to buildings insurance, waking watch or other interim measures, and how much relates to remediation itself.

Check Whether Your Lease May Qualify for Protection

If your building has identified remediation needs, seek advice on whether your lease may qualify for Building Safety Act cost protections, since this can meaningfully affect your exposure to remediation costs specifically, even if it doesn't address insurance costs directly.

Consider Right to Manage Carefully

Right to Manage allows leaseholders to take over management of a building, including arranging its own insurance, but it's worth being realistic that this does not itself reduce a premium that's genuinely priced to reflect real risk, and taking on management brings its own responsibilities.

Complain Through the Right Channel

If you're dealing with an FCA-regulated managing agent or insurer and remain unsatisfied after raising a complaint directly, you may be able to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Seek Independent Advice for Your Specific Building

Given how much depends on your building's specific construction, assessment history and lease terms, independent advice from a solicitor or the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) is genuinely valuable rather than optional for leaseholders significantly affected by these issues.

Illustrative Examples

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Assuming the Building Safety Act automatically protects against rising insurance premiums.
• Assuming every building over a certain height is automatically affected by cladding issues.
• Not requesting a clear breakdown of what's driving a service charge increase.
• Assuming Right to Manage will automatically reduce a genuinely risk-based premium.
• Treating general guidance like this as a substitute for advice on your specific lease and building.
• Assuming a building's position is fixed and can never improve following remediation.

Common Myths

• Myth: The Building Safety Act protects leaseholders from all cladding-related costs. It specifically caps certain historical remediation costs for qualifying leaseholders, not ongoing insurance premiums or interim measures.
• Myth: All leasehold flats in tall buildings are affected by cladding issues. The position depends on each building's individual construction and assessment history, not height alone.
• Myth: Taking over management through Right to Manage will lower insurance costs. It gives leaseholders more control over arranging insurance but doesn't reduce a genuinely risk-based premium.
• Myth: Once remediation is agreed, insurance costs drop immediately. Premiums are typically reassessed at renewal based on updated risk information, which can take time to reflect completed works.
• Myth: This is a simple, one-size-fits-all issue. Building safety and insurance impact genuinely varies building by building, and lease by lease.

Frequently Asked Questions

References and Editorial Standards

Conclusion

Cladding and wider building safety issues have had a genuine, sometimes severe, effect on leasehold buildings insurance since 2017, and the Building Safety Act 2022's leaseholder protections, while significant, are narrower than many people assume: they address certain historical remediation costs specifically, not ongoing insurance premiums or interim safety measures. Understanding this distinction, requesting clear explanations from your managing agent, and seeking independent advice on your specific building and lease are the most genuinely useful steps available to affected leaseholders.

For related guidance, see our Leasehold Flat Insurance UK and Landlord Insurance UK guides.

Next Steps

• Ask your managing agent for an itemised breakdown of your service charge.
• Find out whether your building has an EWS1 assessment and what it found.
• Check whether your lease may qualify for Building Safety Act cost protections.
• Contact the Leasehold Advisory Service (LEASE) for free initial guidance.
• Seek independent legal advice if you're facing significant, unexplained cost increases.