IN Brief:
- Of 4,724 monitored buildings with unsafe cladding, 2,571 have started or completed remediation and 1,849 have completed work.
- The Cladding Safety Scheme has 1,497 eligible buildings, with 417 having started or completed remediation and 139 completed.
- Local authorities are taking or have taken enforcement action against 929 buildings over 11 metres with suspected unsafe cladding.
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government data shows that 2,571 residential buildings of 11 metres or more with unsafe cladding have now started or completed remediation, representing 54% of the 4,724 buildings currently monitored by the department.
Of those, 1,849 buildings, or 39% of the monitored total, have completed remediation work. Another 722 buildings, representing 15%, have work under way, leaving 2,153 monitored buildings where remediation has not started.
The number of buildings being monitored increased by 27 during August, while the net number recorded as having started or completed remediation rose by 20.
The monthly movement is more complex than a simple addition to the completed column. MHCLG says 93 buildings moved into the started or completed category compared with the previous reporting period, while 73 were reclassified so that they were no longer recorded as having started or completed cladding remediation, or were no longer reported as having unsafe cladding.
The department also cautions that figures before December 2025 are not directly comparable with the current series because of changes to the collection and categorisation of social sector data.
The 4,724 monitored buildings are estimated to represent between 65% and 81% of all residential buildings of 11 metres or more expected to require remediation through the government programmes covered by the release.
MHCLG estimates that another 1,100 to 2,600 buildings may still need to be confirmed as eligible, leaving a substantial identification and assessment workload alongside physical construction activity.
Progress varies considerably between remediation routes. In the Building Safety Fund, 640 buildings were proceeding with an application as at 27 August. Of those, 564, or 88%, had started or completed remediation, while 490, or 77%, were recorded as complete, including buildings awaiting building control sign-off.
A further 64 had remediation plans in place and 12 remained at the intent-to-remediate stage.
The Cladding Safety Scheme presents a different position. At the end of August, 1,497 buildings had been assessed as eligible, including 280 transferred from the Building Safety Fund.
Some 417 eligible buildings, or 28%, had started or completed work and 139, or 9%, had completed remediation. Beyond the eligible group, another 2,660 buildings were in pre-eligible stages: 1,846 had live applications moving through eligibility checks and 814 remained at pre-application stage.
Developer-led remediation is the largest single group in the release. Some 4,741 buildings are covered by the developer remediation contract, with 2,679 identified as having life-critical fire safety defects that developers are required to remediate or fund.
Of those defective buildings, 1,416, or 53%, had started or completed work and 613, or 23%, had completed remediation. Another 409 had plans in place but work had not started, while 854, or 32%, were recorded as having neither started work nor plans in place.
The estimated remediation cost for those 2,679 buildings under developer responsibility is around £4.2bn. The figure is based on developer-reported costs where available, with missing values estimated using known average costs by building height band.
It is unchanged from the July release and should therefore be read as an estimate of the current developer remediation liability rather than a fresh monthly cost increase.
Social landlords funding their own work reported 708 buildings with unsafe cladding, of which 518, or 73%, had started or completed remediation.
MHCLG warns that these figures may fluctuate while registered providers work with Homes England to migrate and complete records in the National Remediation Database, making short term movements in this part of the dataset less suitable for simple trend comparisons.
Enforcement remains another route through which stalled buildings are being pushed towards action. Local authorities had taken, or were taking, Housing Act 2004 enforcement action against 929 buildings over 11 metres with suspected unsafe cladding at the end of August, six more than in the July release.
That activity operates alongside funding schemes and developer contracts, reflecting the combination of commercial, regulatory and public funding mechanisms used across the remediation programme.
The 54% headline figure covers buildings where work has either started or completed; it is not a completion rate. Completed remediation stands at 39%, while almost half of monitored buildings have yet to begin works and thousands more remain within eligibility or pre-application processes.
The resulting programme still contains a substantial pipeline of façade removal, replacement systems, fire stopping, access, inspection and building control work, with progress differing sharply between funding and delivery routes.
MHCLG is due to publish the next monthly update at 9.30am on 28 October 2026. That release will provide the next measure of whether the gap between buildings identified, projects entering construction and buildings reaching completion is beginning to narrow.
