The Upper Tribunal has upheld a decision regarding remediation contribution orders (RCOs) relating to Vista Tower in Stevenage
Grey GR Limited Partnership purchased the freehold for Vista Tower from Edgewater (Stevenage) Limited in 2018. Originally built as offices in the 1960s, the 16-storey tower was later converted into 73 residential flats before Grey’s purchase in 2018. Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, assessments of Vista Tower revealed “significant fire safety defects in the building’s external walls”.
Grey GR applied to the government’s Building Safety Fund to cover necessary remediation works, amounting to just under £12.5 million, and entered into a grant funding agreement in January 2024.
Prior to this, in 2023, Grey GR made an RCO application to the First-Tier Tribunal (FTT) against several companies related to the building work at Vista, including the first respondent, Edgewater. In 2024, a hearing featuring 96 respondents took place, and in January 2025, the FTT concluded that it was “just and equitable” to make the RCO, on a “joint and several” basis, against 76 of the 96 respondents. This meant that the RCO was enforceable for the entire amount of just over £13 million “against any one or more of the specified respondents”.
Those against whom the RCO was made appealed the decision on several grounds, challenging whether it was “just and equitable” for the FTT to group the specified respondents into a single RCO and a total payable sum, rather than considering the position of each specified respondent individually. The appellants also said that the FTT had “wrongly concluded that a ‘building safety risk’ for the purposes of Section 120 [of the Building Safety Act 2022] is any risk above ‘low’ risk, so as to include tolerable risks”. They argued that, in this instance, only “an ‘intolerable’ risk could be a ‘building safety risk’”. Another ground of appeal was that it was “wrongly concluded” that the RCO should include the costs of replacing the Type 1 Wall in its entirety.
Regarding the scope of the remedial work needed to be done at Vista Tower, Mr Justice Edwin Johnson said in his judgment: “The first, and most obvious difficulty with the Appellants’ case is that Grey had advice, in the January 2023 FRAEW Report, that it should proceed with the Removal Works.
“Given that this was advice from the specialist fire engineering company which had been engaged by Grey to carry out an investigation and assessment of the external works required by reference to PAS9980, it is difficult to see how the Tribunal went wrong in concluding that it was reasonable for Grey to proceed with the Removal Works. The Removal Works had been recommended by its own expert adviser.”
On the definition of ‘building safety risk’, Mr Justice Edwin Johnson noted: “If a risk is a low risk, it is still capable of qualifying as a risk, for the purposes of Section 120(5), but whether it will be a building safety risk will depend upon whether it can satisfy the other conditions for the existence of a building safety risk. Equally, if the relevant risk is a low risk, but qualifies as a building safety risk, one would expect that factor to play some part in the question of what remedial action is required.”
Commenting on the case, CMS Law said: “This interpretation may warrant careful consideration by the industry. With many fire safety experts taking a more practical view that all high-rise buildings carry an inherent fire safety risk to some degree, the UT’s approach in this decision, which removes any threshold or grading, appears to align more with that reality.”
The appeal was ultimately dismissed on all grounds, with barrister Thomas Crangle noting that in its decision, the UT had “sent a clear message to developers and their associates”.
“The decision confirms the FTT’s jurisdiction to make RCOs on a joint and several basis and that there is no need to apportion sums between respondents, provided it is just and equitable to make an order on a joint and several basis.
“Applicants will also welcome the decision that the ‘just and equitable’ test does not require there to have been participation in the development or financial gain from it (although cases where those features are present are likely to be stronger),” Crangle said.
You can read the full judgment here.