After updating to 7.x-1.0-alpha9 all tags in title are being sanitized, e.g. <br>, even in full html

Problem/Motivation

After updating to 7.x-1.0-alpha9 from 7.x-1.0-alpha8 the
we used in the titles to have a new line started being sanitized, i.e., it displays
instead of breaking the line.

This seems a consequence of the security fix, namely the introduction of check_plain in link.module:766.

I understand that this behaviour could be changed by setting $options['sanitize'] to false, however when using panels I cannot find anywhere to easily do this.

Example call trace when problem occurs:

Proposed resolution

I am not sure how/if this can be resolved but as work around I am using filter_xss($item, ['br']) instead of check_plain. Also considered filter_xss_admin.

Any ideas are welcome. Thanks in advance.