According to IMLA: “The government must attend to the stamp duty and the cladding crisis”

The Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association thinks that the UK government should focus its efforts on more important things.

The Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) is asking Chancellor Rishi Sunak to flexibly reduce the stamp duty holiday to ensure that the “edge of the cliff” is not simply postponed until the end of June.

At the same time, the association said the Chancellor should continue to support victims of unsafe claddings when he announces the budget on March 3.

While the government has pledged £ 5bn for the remediation of the liner to date, IMLA argued that this amount should triple to £ 15bn.

“There is great pressure in the market for the end of the stamp duty holiday.”

Kate Davies, Executive Director of IMLA, said: “The current Stamp Duty holiday deadline of March 31st has created unprecedented levels of activity and put great pressure on lenders and transfer providers as they rush to complete transactions on time.”

“We have asked for some flexibility to avoid penalizing those who fail to meet the deadline, quite possibly for reasons beyond their control.”

“While some buyers may welcome an extension, unless the flexibility we’ve advocated is built-in, it will just kick the trail and create another ‘cliff edge’ in the summer.”

She added: “Other key challenges remain that demand the attention of the Chancellor.

“The misery caused by the cladding crisis has lasted long enough, and while the latest government announcement (of another £ 3.5 billion to fund repair work, bringing the total available to £ 5 billion) is welcome, IMLA believes it does not go far enough.

“It has been estimated that the total cost of removing hazardous claddings and repairing buildings is likely to be closer to £ 15 billion, 3 times what the government is currently committing.”

“To put the government’s £ 5bn liner remediation scheme into context, lenders had to collectively pay more than £ 55bn in compensation for under-sold PPI, which caused no loss of life or livelihood.

“Inspections made necessary by the cladding scandal have revealed countless instances of poor workmanship and incomplete inspections at the construction stage that, while not as potentially lethal as combustible cladding, will require costly repair. It is completely unacceptable to expect tenants to bear these costs.”

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