Urban Splash and four associated companies have been ordered to pay £46.5 million towards fire-safety repairs at seven Manchester apartment blocks. The First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) made the remediation contribution orders on Thursday, 5 November, after proceedings brought by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The buildings

The orders cover Burton Place, the Moho Building, the Chips Building, Box Works, Emmeline House, the Christabel Building and Sylvia House. The blocks were developed between about 2000 and 2008. Investigations after the Grenfell Tower fire found serious defects in each of them, including combustible materials, ineffective cavity barriers, inadequate fire-stopping and failures in compartmentation.

The money

The tribunal accepted that £60.6 million, including VAT, had reasonably been spent or was expected to be spent on the repairs. About £51.5 million of that came from the Building Safety Fund, the public fund set up in 2020 to pay for dangerous cladding to be removed from high-rise homes. The tribunal cut the amount recoverable by 10 per cent to reflect the government's own failings in the building safety crisis, including shortcomings in regulation and oversight, leaving orders totalling £46,500,650.

Who must pay

The five companies facing orders are Urban Splash Limited, Urban Splash Developments Limited, Urban Splash Group Holdings Limited, Urban Splash Work Limited and Stubbs Mill LLP. They are jointly and severally liable and must pay the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government by 3 December 2026. No orders were made against four other respondents. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner welcomed the ruling, saying the developer had been ordered to repay more than £45 million of taxpayers' money. Urban Splash said it was disappointed that the orders covered entities that played no part in developing the buildings.