Draft Building (Public Bodies and Higher-Risk Building Work) (England) Regulations 2023
(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Building (Public Bodies and Higher-Risk Building Work) (England) Regulations 2023.
It is a pleasure to see you, Sir Robert, and to serve under your chairmanship. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, the Government are introducing a more stringent regulatory regime during design and construction, with the Building Safety Regulator becoming the sole building control authority for building works defined as higher risk. Under the current regime, there is an historical exemption available to public bodies where, if approved by the Government, they can obtain a partial or full exemption to the building control procedural requirements. The draft regulations will ensure that in future, public bodies will not be able to obtain an exemption to carry out building control on their own higher-risk building work. The Building Safety Regulator will instead carry that out for all higher-risk buildings, including those owned by public bodies.
The regulations are a small but important part of our ongoing reforms to improve the safety and standards of all buildings. First, the regulations remove the Minister’s ability to grant building control procedural exemptions to public bodies for higher-risk building work. In future, all higher-risk building work will be overseen by the Building Safety Regulator. The ability to grant exemptions for non-higher-risk building work is unaffected.
Secondly, the regulations require any public bodies with a partial exemption under section 54 of the Building Act 1984 to cancel their public body notice with the local authority if the building work becomes higher risk. Local authorities will also be required to cancel public body notices in the same circumstances. Currently, no public body is approved under this partial exemption system; therefore, the measures are being introduced for future use only, and they will not change existing arrangements. Only one public body has any type of exemption—the Metropolitan police—and separate regulations to be introduced later this year will change that exemption to apply only to non-higher-risk building work.
Thirdly, the regulations will allow the Building Safety Regulator to impose a fine of £7,500 on public bodies that have not cancelled their public body notice when building work becomes higher-risk building work. For the reasons outlined, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Robert. I thank the Minister for that concise explanation. The regulations, as he said, simply ensure that building control on higher-risk buildings can no longer be undertaken by local authorities and other public bodies with a building control procedural exemption, but must instead be supervised by the new Building Safety Regulator. The regulations are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of the new building safety regime. The Opposition will support them.
As the statutory instrument before us is narrow, technical and uncontroversial, I do not intend to detain the Committee for any length of time in debating its specific provisions. I do, however, have two questions for the Minister—I had to work hard to get the questions on this one. First, I note that a full impact assessment has not been produced for the instrument, given that it is judged to have no significant impact, but have the Government made any estimate of how many fewer public body notices are likely to be required under the new regime?
Secondly, and more importantly, the Government sought views on the matter of restricting the activities and functions for building control bodies as part of their consultation on changes to the building control profession and the building control process for approved inspectors. The consultation closed only on 14 March and, according to gov.uk, the feedback submitted is still being analysed. While it is laudable that the Department should seek to move at pace to make amendments to the Building Act 1984 in connection with higher-risk building work carried out by local authorities and any other public bodies, the fact that we are passing the regulations before the consultation responses have even been analysed prompts the question of why the Government asked for feedback in the first place. Will the Minister therefore clarify whether the responses to the consultation have informed the drafting of the statutory instrument in any way, given that none of us would presumably wish to see consultees waste time making submissions that are effectively ignored?
Lee Rowley
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s questions. I wrote down his first question, but I have lost it among my documents. Will he remind me of it?
Lee Rowley
The position is that, because the public body notices are not being utilised and the use of them is therefore minimal, the impact of their usage or the future need for them will also be minimal. On the second point, I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman, in order not to detain the Committee any longer.
Question put and agreed to.