Were you told about the building-safety position when you bought?
Find out which records may help establish what was known, what your lender required and what advice you received at the time.
Explore the cladding and building-safety guide →You bought a flat, obtained a mortgage and completed without anyone suggesting that its external walls would prevent a future sale.
Years later, a buyer’s lender asks for an EWS1 form. The managing agent cannot provide the document requested. Remediation works may be planned, but nobody can give a firm timetable or explain who will pay.
The transaction stalls—even though nothing inside your flat has changed.
This situation is especially difficult because several different issues are often described simply as “the cladding problem.” Identifying the actual question is the first step towards dealing with it.
The four questions that often become confused
A sale or remortgage involving building safety may raise four separate questions:
- What is the external wall system made from, and has it been assessed?
- Does the lender’s valuer require an EWS1 or other evidence?
- Are remediation works needed, and who is responsible for carrying them out?
- Can any of the cost lawfully be passed to the leaseholder?
An answer to one does not necessarily answer the others.
A building might have an EWS1 but still face remediation. A leaseholder might benefit from statutory cost protection while a buyer’s lender still requires valuation evidence. Alternatively, relevant assessments may exist but cannot be obtained quickly from the landlord or managing agent.
What is an EWS1?
An EWS1 is an external-wall-system assessment form used in the valuation and mortgage process. It is not a statutory approval, a guarantee that a building complies with every requirement or a certificate declaring the building safe.
The form normally relates to the block rather than an individual flat. Not every building requires one. Whether it is requested can depend on the building, the external wall materials, the valuer’s professional judgment and the proposed lender’s requirements.
Calling it an “EWS1 certificate” can therefore be misleading. Its purpose is narrower: it supplies information for valuation and lending decisions.
Why can a missing EWS1 stop a transaction?
Where a lender or valuer considers external-wall evidence necessary, the absence of an acceptable form may prevent the valuation from being completed or leave the conveyancer unable to satisfy the lender’s instructions.
That does not necessarily mean the flat is unsafe or unmortgageable with every lender. It means that the evidence required for that particular valuation or mortgage application is not presently available or acceptable.
Requirements and valuation practice can differ. A form accepted previously may not automatically satisfy another lender or valuer years later.
Building-safety cost protection is a different question
In England, the Building Safety Act 2022 introduced financial protections concerning certain historical building-safety remediation costs in relevant buildings.
Whether those protections apply depends on statutory tests concerning matters such as the building, the relevant defect, the lease and circumstances at the statutory qualifying date. Qualifying leaseholders have protection from cladding-remediation costs, while liability for some non-cladding defects and interim measures may be subject to different rules and caps.
The statutory regime is detailed and has been supplemented and amended. Different parts of building-safety legislation also use different definitions and thresholds.
For that reason, nobody should assume that an EWS1 result determines who pays, or that statutory cost protection guarantees that a lender will accept the flat.
Documents that may be requested
Depending on the building and transaction, the relevant material may include:
- a fire risk assessment;
- a Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls;
- a PAS 9980 assessment;
- an EWS1 form;
- a remediation plan or works timetable;
- evidence that the building is within a remediation scheme;
- details of any developer commitment;
- a leaseholder deed of certificate; and
- a landlord’s certificate.
These documents have different purposes. In particular, the leaseholder deed of certificate and landlord’s certificate should not be treated as interchangeable.
Where a document cannot be produced, establish whether it is missing, out of date, not required or has never existed. “The managing agent has not supplied it” is not yet a complete explanation of the building’s position.
Why the landlord or managing agent matters
Much of the relevant information concerns the whole building and is held—or commissioned—by the landlord, accountable person or managing agent rather than the individual flat owner.
A seller may therefore be unable to answer the buyer’s enquiries without third-party cooperation. Delays can arise where:
- external-wall assessments have not been commissioned;
- the parties disagree about which assessment is required;
- remediation responsibility has not been resolved;
- certificates have not been prepared or are incomplete;
- a developer or government scheme is still considering the building; or
- the managing agent does not respond promptly.
This can leave the seller caught between the buyer’s conveyancer, the proposed lender and the building’s management arrangements.
What can you do if a sale or remortgage is stuck?
Ask your conveyancer to identify the outstanding point precisely. Useful questions include:
- Which document or confirmation has been requested?
- Who has requested it: the buyer, conveyancer, valuer or lender?
- What information is already available for the building?
- Is the issue valuation, life safety, remediation responsibility or leaseholder cost?
- Has the proposed lender been asked to consider the available evidence?
- Has the landlord or managing agent explained why the requested document is unavailable?
- Are remediation works proposed, funded or already under way?
If you are selling, your conveyancer can ask the buyer’s solicitor what remains unresolved and whether it arises from the buyer’s lender’s requirements. If you are remortgaging, your conveyancer can check the proposed lender’s requirements directly.
Reporting the circumstances does not guarantee that the lender or valuer will proceed, but it helps replace a broad “cladding problem” with a defined question.
What happened when you originally bought?
If the issue existed—or information about it was available—when you bought, you may begin to question what was investigated and what you were told.
The answer depends heavily on timing.
The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 fundamentally changed the attention given to external walls and fire safety. The EWS1 process was introduced in December 2019. The English statutory leaseholder cost protections arrived later, in 2022.
A purchase before those developments cannot simply be assessed against today’s documents and legal framework. Equally, that does not mean that known defects, existing fire-safety information, proposed works or potential service-charge liabilities were necessarily irrelevant before an EWS1 form existed.
The proper starting point is what was known—or could reasonably have been identified—at the time of the purchase.
Which records from the purchase may matter?
Relevant evidence may include:
- the management pack or LPE1 replies;
- enquiries raised with the landlord or managing agent;
- fire-risk or external-wall information then available;
- any EWS1 in existence at the time;
- major-works and service-charge correspondence;
- the report on title supplied to you;
- communications about potential remediation;
- what was reported to your mortgage lender; and
- the lender’s written requirements at the time.
Those records can help establish whether the external walls were investigated, what answers were received, whether cost exposure was discussed and whether the effect on a future sale or remortgage was explained.
Why getting a mortgage does not settle the question
The fact that a mortgage completed shows that one lender proceeded on that transaction. It does not necessarily show how readily mortgageable the flat was across the wider market or whether every relevant matter was identified and reported.
Lenders’ written requirements have not been uniform, and individual lenders revise them over time. That means both the identity of the lender and the completion date may matter.
It is also important to separate two duties: what the conveyancer had to report to the lender and what the conveyancer had to explain to the purchaser. The questions overlap, but they are not identical.
Could the present problem have been anticipated?
The existence of a problem today does not by itself prove that anybody was at fault when the flat was bought.
The relevant questions include:
- What information existed at the time?
- What did the management pack disclose?
- What enquiries were made?
- What did the lender’s contemporary instructions require?
- What did the report on title say?
- Were known works, risks or potential costs explained?
- Would fuller information have affected the decision to buy or the price paid?
Historical lender requirements are one part of that investigation. The original conveyancing file and appropriate legal advice are also needed before conclusions can be drawn.
To establish what a particular mortgage lender’s recorded requirements said on the relevant transaction date, consult the Lexsure Lender Archive cladding and external-wall-systems page.
Were you told about the building-safety position when you bought?
Find out which records may help establish what was known, what your lender required and what advice you received at the time.
Explore the cladding and building-safety guide →The date changes the question
Cladding and building safety have developed through a series of major events, professional responses, lender-policy changes and legislation. Applying today’s terminology retrospectively can obscure what was actually available and expected when the transaction completed.
If cladding, a missing EWS1 or another building-safety issue is preventing you from selling or remortgaging, read When I Bought’s detailed guide to cladding, EWS1 and building safety. It explains how the purchase date, management information, contemporary lender requirements and advice given at the time may fit together.
You do not need to decide whether anyone was negligent before asking what happened. Begin with the building’s current position, then reconstruct the documents and advice from the original purchase.
This article provides general information only. It is not legal, fire-safety, valuation or financial advice about any building, property, transaction or potential claim. The statutory protections described apply to England; other jurisdictions have different regimes. Building-safety law, valuation guidance and mortgage-lender requirements change. Obtain advice from appropriately qualified professionals. Time limits may apply to legal claims.