Remediation orders and contribution orders at the First-tier Tribunal

Why do the orders exist?

Cost protection alone leaves a gap: a leaseholder who cannot be charged for remediation is still living in an unremediated building if nobody does the work. The Act closes the gap with two tribunal instruments. The remediation order, under section 123, compels a relevant landlord to fix specified defects by a specified date. The remediation contribution order, under section 124, makes the money move: a landlord, the developer, or a company associated with either can be ordered to contribute to the cost. Fix the building; fund the fix; the two orders divide the labour.

What can the tribunal actually reach?

Further than corporate planners assumed. The contribution order's defining feature is association: it can reach companies connected to the landlord or developer, which is precisely why development structures built as special purpose vehicles with thin balance sheets have not proven the shield they were designed to be. The tribunal has shown willingness to look through structures to the substance behind them, and the case law since the Act has been a running education in how far association reaches.

For leaseholders the practical meaning is that a stalled building has a forum: an application by interested persons, a category which includes leaseholders and extends to regulators and other bodies, puts a judge rather than a standoff in charge of the timetable. The Remediation Improvement Plan launched in April 2026 exists because pace, not power, is now the system's weak point.

How does this connect to the rest of the regime?

The orders are the enforcement backstop of the world the leaseholder protections and certificates create: the certificates decide who cannot be charged, and the orders decide who must act and pay. For building owners the strategic read is simple, and this site gives developers the same advice it gives them at the gateways: the era in which delay was a strategy is closing, the tribunal's reach through association is real, and the cheapest version of every remediation is the one you did not have to be ordered into. For leaseholders: LEASE advises free, the tribunal route is designed to be usable, and a building that is neither being fixed nor funded is exactly what sections 123 and 124 were written for.