EWS1 forms and cladding checks for buyers and sellers in 2026

An EWS1 form is a short record of a fire safety assessment of a building's external walls, produced for valuers and lenders rather than for regulators. It is not a safety certificate, it is not legally required in order to sell a flat, and the absence of one does not mean a building is unsafe.

When a lender asks for one

Lenders ask when their valuer cannot otherwise value the flat with confidence. RICS sets the criteria valuers use, and on 12 May 2026 it published a second edition of that standard, renamed Secured lending valuation of properties in multi-storey, multi-occupancy residential buildings with cladding.

That second edition takes effect on 1 November 2026, so the current version still governs valuations until then. It sets different thresholds for buildings over six storeys, buildings of five or six storeys, and buildings of four storeys or fewer, and it requires a valuer to have a rationale before requesting a form at all.

It also allows an executive summary from a fire risk appraisal of external walls to be relied on instead of an EWS1 in some cases, provided it gives a clear outcome on whether remedial work is needed and is signed by a suitably qualified professional. If you're buying with a mortgage close to that 1 November switchover, it's worth asking your broker which edition your lender's valuer will be working to.

The assessment behind the form

A fire risk appraisal of external walls, usually shortened to FRAEW, is a structured assessment of the fire risk from a building's external wall system. Government guidance on FRAEWs, published on 14 September 2026, confirms it covers cladding, insulation, cavity barriers, balconies, windows and doors, and that assessors should follow PAS 9980:2026. Crucially, a FRAEW only looks at the external wall system. It doesn't cover the building's wider fire safety, which sits in the fire risk assessment instead.

PAS 9980 is the code of practice for these appraisals. A revised edition, PAS 9980:2026, was published in September 2026 alongside supporting guidance. Reports competently produced under the 2022 edition remain valid and can still be relied on, so an existing appraisal doesn't become worthless just because a newer code exists.

A FRAEW does not replace the building's fire risk assessment, which every residential block with two or more flats must have. The fire risk assessment is the document that should identify whether a FRAEW is needed in the first place, and its findings should feed back in to update that assessment.

What a qualifying leaseholder cannot be charged

The Building Safety Act 2022 protects qualifying leaseholders in England. A lease qualifies if it is a long lease of a single dwelling in a building above 11 metres, or at least five storeys including the ground floor, granted before 14 February 2022, where the leaseholder pays a service charge and, on that date, either lived there as their only or main home or owned no more than three UK dwellings in total. Gov.uk's leaseholder protections guidance sets out exactly which lease terms qualify, if you want to check your own.

Qualifying leaseholders pay nothing towards fixing or replacing an unsafe cladding system, whatever their flat is worth. For everything else, non-cladding defects such as missing fire breaks or defective fire doors, the cap depends on where the building is and what the flat is worth. Properties valued under £175,000 outside Greater London, or under £325,000 inside it, pay nothing at all. The table below sets out the rest.

Whatever the cap, it's spread over ten years with no more than a tenth chargeable in any single year, so at the £10,000 cap that's a maximum of £1,000 a year.

Two points get missed. Anything already paid towards remediation or interim measures, such as a waking watch, since 28 June 2017 counts against the cap. And the protections attach to the flat rather than the person, so they pass to whoever buys next. If you're selling rather than buying, our guide to selling a leasehold flat covers how these protections and any outstanding remediation status can affect a sale.

Separately, where the building owner on 14 February 2022 was the developer or was associated with them, leaseholders are protected from historical building safety defect costs whether or not their lease otherwise qualifies.

Who funds the work

The Building Safety Fund closed to new applications on 1 September 2025. The Cladding Safety Scheme is now the single route for buildings of 11 metres and above in England, including those in London.

A separate fund for buildings under 11 metres opened for an eight-week window closing on Friday 9 October 2026. Only the responsible entity for the building can apply, not individual leaseholders, though residents can flag their building to Homes England through its online tool, and work that started before 9 July 2026 is not eligible.

Where a building's paperwork is missing or a lender won't move without it, some insurers offer a specific indemnity policy instead of waiting on an EWS1. Our guide to indemnity insurance explains when that route is realistic and when it just isn't an option.

How far the programme has got

As at the end of July 2026, 4,697 buildings of 11 metres or more had been identified with unsafe cladding. The monthly building safety remediation data records 1,833 of those as having completed remediation and a further 718 as having started, so 54% had started or finished, and 46% had not yet begun.

Read that percentage carefully. It's a share of the buildings government is monitoring, and the department's own estimate is that between 5,900 and 7,400 buildings over 11 metres have potentially unsafe cladding. The monitored set is somewhere between about 64 and 81% of the likely total, so a meaningful number of affected buildings aren't yet in the published figures at all.

The commitments to remediate 18-metre-plus buildings in government-funded schemes by the end of 2029, and 11 to 18 metre buildings by 2031, are government policy rather than law. A Remediation Bill creating a legal duty to remediate was announced in the 2026 King's Speech but has not been introduced to Parliament, so nobody is currently under a statutory deadline to finish the work.

If you are buying, ask for three things before exchange: the current fire risk assessment, any FRAEW or EWS1, and the landlord's certificate and deed of certificate that establish the building's status under the leaseholder protections. A building with funding agreed but no start date can sit for years, and your lender will want to see the paperwork. Our complete guide to conveyancing sets out where in the timeline to ask for each of them, and it's worth comparing conveyancing quotes early if you know a leasehold flat is going to need this extra checking.