Permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal has been granted in: Almacantar Centre Point Nominee Ltd v De Valk and Others

Martin Hutchings KC and Harriet Holmes, instructed by Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, on behalf of their landlord client, Almacantar, have secured permission to appeal from the decision of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) to the Court of Appeal in case of Almacantar Centre Point Nominee Ltd v De Valk and Others [2025] UKUT 298 (LC).

The appeal raises a number of fundamental issues relating to the Building Safety Act 2022 and the protections given to leaseholders in respect of service charge recovery for ‘cladding remediation’ work, including:

• Whether cladding remediation under the Act only applies in respect of ‘relevant defects’ or whether the Act’s provisions in fact apply to a much wider class of buildings and much wider types of landlord’s repair work;
• What the Act means in Part 5 where it refers to the un-defined terms: ‘cladding’ and ‘cladding system’; as well as the term ‘cladding remediation’;
• What is meant by ‘unsafe’ in this context.

The Court of Appeal’s decision on each of these points will break new ground. There is no binding authority directly addressing these points.

Our previous post in relation to the Upper Tribunal’s decision, with a link to the judgment of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber), may be found here:

Summary of Upper Tribunal decision