The government has declined to indicate when it plans to bring in the Responsible Actors Scheme designed to punish housebuilders that refuse to agree to repair fire safety risks in their own homes, despite publishing details of how the scheme will work.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) set out guidance on Friday which said the scheme will prevent developers from carrying out major planning permissions or from receiving building control approvals for any works. The publication of the guidance follows the naming of 11 firms earlier in March that had failed to sign up to the government’s contract committing to repair all life-critical fire safety defects on homes they’d built going back 30 years - albeit four of those have now since signed.

…