Is this a qualifying lease under the Building Safety Act?

The protections travel with the flat

This is the part that matters most when buying, and the Lexsure wording below states it directly: the protections attach to the property on the basis of its status on the qualifying date, and they transfer automatically to later buyers.

Both ways. A flat that qualified then qualifies for you. A flat that did not qualify then does not start qualifying because you would have met the test yourself.

So the question to get answered before exchange is a factual one about the seller's position in February 2022, and the evidence for it is the Leaseholder Deed of Certificate.

The trap: extending the lease can lose the protection

A statutory lease extension usually works by surrendering the existing lease and granting a new one. A new lease is not a lease granted before 14 February 2022 — and the qualifying criteria require one.

The same Lexsure guidance records this as a known problem, states the expectation that landlords will reflect a qualifying leaseholder's existing protections in any extension or variation, and advises leaseholders to take legal advice and agree contractual terms with the landlord before taking a new lease.

If you are buying a flat in a relevant building and expect to extend the lease, raise this specifically and early. It is the one place in conveyancing where doing something sensible about one problem can create a much larger one.