Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill (First sitting)
Thursday 12th November 2026
(2 days, 2 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesBuilding Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill 2026-27 View all Building Safety (Remediation of Unsafe Cladding etc) Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 12 November 2026 - (12 Nov 2026)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we begin, I remind Members please to switch electronic devices to silent, and that tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. We will consider first the programme motion on the amendment paper, then a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication and a motion to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence sessions. In view of the time available, I hope that those matters can be taken formally, without debate. TABLE Date Time Witness Thursday 12 November Until no later than 12.05pm Building Safety Regulator Homes England Local Government Association Thursday 12 November Until no later than 12.40pm National Fire Chiefs Council London Fire Brigade Thursday 12 November Until no later than 1.00pm Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester Thursday 12 November Until no later than 2.35pm The Property Institute National Housing Federation Thursday 12 November Until no later than 3.00pm End Our Cladding Scandal Thursday 12 November Until no later than 3.30pm Britain Remade Centre for Policy Studies Thursday 12 November Until no later than 3.50pm Vistry Thursday 12 November Until no later than 4.20pm Ian Abley, Steve Day Thursday 12 November Until no later than 4.40pm Dame Judith Hackitt Thursday 12 November Until no later than 5.00pm DCCH Experts LLP Thursday 12 November Until no later than 5.20pm Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 11.30 am on Thursday 12
November) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Thursday 12 November;
(b) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 17 November;
(c) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 19 November;
(d) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 24 November;
(e) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 26 November;
(f) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 1 December;
(g) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 3 December;
(h) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 8 December;
2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
3. proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 34; Schedule 1; Clauses 35 to 45; Schedule 2; Clauses 46 to 102; Schedule 3; Clauses 103 to 116; New Clauses; New Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
4. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 8 December.—(Florence Eshalomi.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Florence Eshalomi.)
The Chair
Copies of the written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Florence Eshalomi.)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start to hear from witnesses, do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill?
James Asser (West Ham and Beckton) (Lab)
As we have London Fire Brigade witnesses, I declare that my partner works for it, in fire safety.
Sagal Abdi-Wali (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I declare that I am still a councillor in a local authority.
The Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith (Florence Eshalomi)
I declare that the headquarters of the London Fire Brigade are in my constituency and that I meet the fire commissioner.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
I declare my interest as a volunteer director of the St Austell community land trust.
The Chair
If any interests are particularly relevant to a Member’s line of questioning or speech, they should declare them again at the appropriate time.
Examination of Witnesses
Lord Roe, Charlie Pugsley, Helen Fisher and Mark Norris gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the Building Safety Regulator, Homes England and the Local Government Association. We must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed, and for the purposes of the witnesses, that means that this session will end at 12.05 pm. I ask each of the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record.
Charlie Pugsley: Good morning. I am Charlie Pugsley, acting chief exec of the Building Safety Regulator.
Lord Roe: Good morning. I am Andy Roe, chair of the Building Safety Regulator.
Helen Fisher: Good morning. I am Helen Fisher, the director of the cladding safety scheme and interim measures alarm fund at Homes England.
Mark Norris: I am Mark Norris from the Local Government Association.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
Q
Lord Roe: It is nice to see you. The Bill gives powers to a series of regulators, which is useful. The first thing I want to say is that we welcome the Bill as another tool in our arsenal. It is not a panacea, but it will certainly be useful with the most recalcitrant actors in this landscape. I think, between us, we are clear how we operate. We are in constant dialogue—multiple meetings a week—with the likes of Homes England, local authorities, the London Fire Brigade and other fire services, and there is very good co-ordination.
There is no single hierarchy that necessarily fits all circumstances. My experience of having been a regulator in this space for a very long time is that you choose the most appropriate regulator set against the circumstances. You need to do that early in any potential enforcement process. It normally comes through a memorandum of understanding in the context of those individual circumstances. To set a sort of hierarchy within this would potentially be a mistake.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Lord Roe: Because remediation itself is a complex issue. Without wanting to go into infinite detail, the reality is that there is normally a number of different routes to enforcement on a dangerous building, and it is not necessarily through this piece of legislation. I want to be clear: this is one tool in the arsenal. If we were presented with a problem building or entity organisation, the first thing we would do is get on to the other regulating and enforcing organisations and decide what the best route of enforcement is. It might not be this Bill. It could be the Housing Act. It could be the fire safety order. The point is that determining a hierarchy for remediation is potentially a mistake. I would rather we operate as we do, which is in clear collaboration and set out in an MOU. I do not know if there is anything you would add to that in terms of practical reality, Charlie.
Charlie Pugsley: Normally, for example, the Building Safety Regulator would be expected to take the lead on high-rise buildings, but we have one case currently that we are working with the London Fire Brigade on, and we are both looking at enforcement. If the fire brigade is six months ahead—you are legally not allowed to duplicate—it is in the public interest and the interest of efficiency for the fire brigade to make that decision. If that is the case, so be it—they should decide, to get the enforcement in the most timely and effective way.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Lord Roe: It gives us more powers to tackle the worst actors in the remediation landscape. It gives us the additional ability to call those people in and force them to make progress. That is the advantage of this legislation.
Florence Eshalomi
Q
Lord Roe: I am conscious of time, but it comes in all shapes and forms. It could be reluctance to devote the money required to an expensive specialist contracting model to get the work done, so you can hold things up at contract. It could be putting forward really poor, under-resourced design proposals. There are multiple different ways you can hold this process up. To be fair, lots of things make operating in this landscape complicated and hard. Perhaps I will come back to that as a principal answer: this is a good tool. It will not solve remediation, but that is not what it is intended for. A lot of stuff on the delivery side has to be improved, whether it is inside the regulator or the other agencies or out in industry. That will probably give us the greatest gain, but this is a very useful tool where people are not complying.
With the greatest respect, I hope the witnesses this afternoon bring up-to-date evidence. We have gone from a 30% approval rate and a median determination time on approvals into the gateway 2 system of over a year, which was completely unacceptable. Charlie and I were charged with trying to shift that. We publish data transparently every single month. We are now at a 92% rolling approval rate. We got the median determination time down to something in the region of 20 weeks, and we will reduce it further. I personally am not experiencing huge levels of non-compliance, to be fair to the industry. They have worked hard to improve the standard of applications and move things on, but this is a very difficult space to operate in—and where there are bad actors, this will be a good tool.
Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)
Q
Mark Norris: Like the building safety regulator, the LGA welcomes the Bill. It is another tool in the toolbox. As MHCLG’s statistics already show, local authorities are out there doing enforcement now and have been for a number of years. Some 940 buildings are being inspected by councils under the Housing Act to take enforcement actions against some of the bad actors that Lord Roe referred to, supported by the Joint Inspection Team, which the Department funds the LGA to support. They have completed over 200 inspections so far.
The issue for us, which Lord Roe touched on, is capacity and resources to do that. Environmental health officers are in short supply—there is not a ready tree on which they grow to recruit them from. In terms of being able to do additional work, we already know that environmental health officers have a range of additional responsibilities. Recent legislation, including the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the social housing Act from 2023, includes a range of additional duties on local housing authorities within the housing space. Resourcing capacity in environmental health will be needed going forward to support councils in being able to do that work. We are fully up for the task, but need the resources and capacity to do that alongside everything else we are being asked to do, as you pointed out.
Sarah Gibson
Q
Mark Norris: I think they will notice a material improvement from this legislation. The experience of the Joint Inspection Team is that you might know what is wrong with the building and what needs to be fixed, but progressing things through first-tier tribunals to get the ruling that that is what the building owner or responsible entity needs to do takes time. Giving us something that places a duty on responsible entities to fix the building—that says very categorically, “This is what you have to do”—will help to speed that process up. But you are right: councils will need resources and capacity in addition to that to help them make the most of the legislation and the tools available in it.
Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
Q
Lord Roe: Those are two different things. I would not want to confuse necessary operational improvement with legislation to deal with bad actors. What you are talking about there is our responsibility to appropriately take a decision on what is sometimes a very complex situation, with thousands of pages to each application, while also operating in the context of a national lack of suitably skilled people to do facade engineering—also a particular point of risk. All I can do is point to the evidence, which shows that there was an unacceptable situation a year and a half ago when we came in: if you were one of those residents and had an application submitted into our system, you could wait up to a year or more. That was not okay and I have apologised for it repeatedly in other Committees.
We were charged to turn that around. I would argue—I have got to say this in defence of the team responsible—that we have done that, because we are now at 92% approval and with 20-week determination times. That will come down further, although maybe not by a lot—this is not about poor bureaucracy or a lack of emails or care anymore; it is about the engineering complexity of getting a building safe that has been built really badly.
The message to your constituents is first that we are super-available. Charlie and I get hundreds of emails into the inbox every week from people who often have rightful challenge—or sometimes do not. They will get a reply and response and, where necessary, we will unpick individual cases from the top of the BSR hierarchy down.
The point is that we can evidence the operational improvement. It is real and it is there in the figures. It is also there in the experience of both industry and many residents. We meet with all the campaigning groups almost weekly to gather intelligence, try and pick off poor actors and recognise where we are doing wrong and where there needs to be improvement in the system. I know, though, that is not going to be a comfort to people who are still trapped inside those blocks and who are under tremendous pressure. All I can tell them—I am sure many of them will be watching—is that we will be doing everything in our power to improve our system and force recalcitrant actors to do better. However, it is a complex problem that has been three decades-plus in the making.
Charlie Pugsley: One thing in the Bill is a duty to bring forward the assessment; that is something that we found in our remediation enforcement unit and have chased up. We work closely with Homes England and other partners. If that duty helps drive that forward, one part of the bigger puzzle will have been progressed and can help. But as Lord Roe says, there is no silver bullet; this is about a collective endeavour.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
Q
Lord Roe: It is not just the duties inherent within the Bill; it is the skilled contractors on the other side of it. The answer is no. This problem was built over decades, across successive Governments of all colours who neglected to invest in construction skills. This is not a political point, but the reality is that there is a very significant national endeavour to correct that, led at Secretary of State level. However, it will take time to reverse. There is a very real problem, and this is part of the complexity.
The Bill is a good tool for enforcement, which we will use, but to be fair to applicants, if you cannot get a specialist scaffolder because none is available in your area, or you cannot find the right facade engineer, we need to be pragmatic about how we chase your application. Otherwise, we will potentially force applicants to engage with poor or unskilled contractors. There are hidden dangers within all of this. If I am honest, all of us are trying to fix the plane on the runway because this mess was created over a number of decades.
The skill shortage is quite profound on both the industry side and for us. We pay very good rates; we are a costs-recovered agency. We employ the same private engineers that the applicants will be trying to employ as well, because there is a small pool of specialists within this field. There is currently a lot of investment to build that capacity, but you do not train these people in one year—it is not like that.
My point is that this Bill is great, genuinely, and we will use it selectively against people where it is appropriate to do so. Before someone else gets to it, I should say that that is unlikely to be resident managed entities, because that would be punching down. That is not okay and we are well aware of that, but there is a much bigger operational problem, which we are all charged with helping to solve, along with the industry, because we will not solve the problem without it.
Lewis Cocking
Q
Lord Roe: I am not saying they should do more. I am well aware of the work being done within the Construction Skills Mission Board. There is a huge endeavour. It is a massive joint industry piece as well. There is really good co-operation from industry and Government together, but they are trying to reverse-engineer a problem that was decades in the—[Interruption.] You might as well say that, Charlie—he is writing me notes. A good example would be the RBIs.
Charlie Pugsley: It is not for us to comment on behalf of the Government, but we are aware that funding has gone into registered building inspectors, for example, from the Government.
Lewis Cocking
Q
Lord Roe: No; I do not think the two things are the same. I think they are doing enough, but sometimes—I mean this with the greatest respect—I sit in front of Committees that want to see reversed in one or two years a problem that was decades in the making. Some of these people can take up to a decade to train. We are talking about very specialist work, particularly in the context of external remediation and façade engineering. These are some of the most experienced and qualified people in the engineering world. You cannot just invent them. It is a bit like growing the number of environmental health inspectors—these are really specialist.
There is £625 million inside the Construction Skills Mission Board, I think. To be fair, the previous Government had started a lot on this as well and I want to recognise that; the previous Administration, through Michael Gove, had started to do a lot of things with this, but it takes a long time to resolve. All the time the housing economy is difficult, by the way, it has an impact on available skills and the people who are going to get employed. So we are trying to get ourselves out of a cycle.
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
Q
I have in my constituency a case that I think is a useful test case for the Bill. Barratt Redrow built a building; cladding was an issue but, in looking at that, all sorts of other issues about the whole structure of the building were uncovered. My constituents have been decanted for three years and they are asked to go back next week on the basis of a report by the developers, Barratt Redrow, who in their mind caused all those problems. My constituents want independent scrutiny of that. They want independently to know that, for example, the concrete that it has been made with, which is in question, is the right one. Are they safe to go back? Does the Bill allow for that? Where do residents go when they are being asked to return, or during a process of remediation, for that independent aspect of it? Do you think that is strong enough, or could more be done about the quality and consistency of assessments?
Helen Fisher: I will start with the same message that you heard from the other panel members: Homes England supports the introduction of more tools to ensure that there are things that can be done against those who are not doing what needs to be done.
In response to the question about independent scrutiny, the Bill is introducing tools to ensure that fire risk appraisals of the external wall are put on to a level where they will all have independent peer review. Our experience in Homes England is that when we put the cladding safety scheme together, we listened to residents and leaseholders; we worked extensively with End Our Cladding Scandal and others, and the message—this is the question that you are asking—came out very clearly from them that, over the decade since Grenfell, trust has broken down significantly between developers, building owners and managing agents. We placed the design of that programme significantly in the middle of that to make sure that any independent investigation that had been done by any party was brought into Homes England and put through panel engagement that was independently qualified in order to peer-review, challenge and ensure.
There are policy aspects that are difficult, such as proportionality; PAS 9980 itself has subjectivity to it, and we know, with our engineers and our panels, that there is a degree of growth there over the last two or three years in the programme. Scrutiny exists in the cladding safety scheme. I think we need to bottle that, and this Bill moves towards that—making sure of independent auditing of key investigation documents, such as a fire risk appraisal of an external wall, is having that form of scrutiny.
That is crucial for residents and leaseholders, so that they can have confidence in the documentation that is delivered by individuals and they do not have to concern themselves about who the original instructor of the documents is—whether it is a developer, a freeholder or a right-to-manage company. We have dealt with both ends of that spectrum from betterment and wanting the work to go further than expected, to the other end, where the position is trying to do the least amount of work as is tolerable.
I have a slightly different problem from Andy and Charlie, as we deal with this at every height. The Building Safety Regulator covers buildings of 18 metres-plus, and then there are high-rise buildings. The majority of 11 to 18-metre buildings now coming through are right-to-manage or small entities, so there is a need for us to operationally adapt to that to ensure we are giving support and helping with independent scrutiny, not just to ensure we hold the market to account, but to ensure support for right-to-manage companies so that they can take independent audit as assurance that that work is right for them.
Lord Roe: Could I just add something to provide a bit of assurance, since I imagine that some of your constituents will be watching? Obviously, if an HRB is above the threshold of 18 metres, it will come through our gateway process, which I know is onerous, but is onerous for a reason. We are going to look at the dead load of the façade engineering. We then look at it in the in-build phase as well, so we are going to get eyes on what they are doing—it is like building your extension—and then we sign it off. That is the point of enhanced building control, but it carries some complexity and it takes time.
On the flipside, although it does not solve some of the other problems around the split between internal and external defects, every high-rise building requires a building assessment certificate. That has been in law since 2024. Again, it was not communicated properly when the regulator was set up—we are not going to defend that—but we have done an enormous amount of communication since to educate and put guidance out there. That will mean that it has to come into our system on the basis of an assessment. We will look at the quality of that assessment in determining whether the evidence coming to us is accurate.
The safeguards are there in the legislation. The problem is that if you are living in one of these blocks, it is complex, it is long, it can be costly and there is a shortage of the specialists you need to deal with stuff. It is mind-blowing for professionals in the space who have been doing it for years—you do not have a hope as a resident management company director. I have the utmost sympathy for them.
The challenge to us is less about the Bill. I give credit to Helen; we see each other weekly and meet the campaign groups together. We are trying to get intelligence to improve across our shared systems. It is all about our operational improvement at the other end to bring internal and external defects together. Even if the funding does not match, can we do better inside our organisation to put it in the same team, so that you look at the building at one time? We are not there yet. We are on a pretty radical journey of transformation inside the regulator. A lot of stuff is a lot better, but there is more to do.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
Q
Mark Norris: Shall I go first and have a quick stab at that? As you know, there are complex problems with finding out and addressing ownership of buildings. As Lord Roe said, there are bad actors who deliberately try to obfuscate ownership to make it more difficult for people to enforce against them. Certainly, the experience that local authorities have had when using the Housing Act 1988 is that that is a problem.
The provisions in the Bill are at least trying to move us into a position where it is harder for people to hide behind legal entities and not take responsibility for what they should be doing. That is a stronger provision that enables regulators to take action to identify who the right people are. It is really helpful. Will it entirely solve every single problem? No, it probably will not. There will continue to be bad actors who do the best they can to hide behind something, but this is a good step in the right direction and gives us additional tools to take the action that we want to take against the people who really are responsible.
Lord Roe: May I add one thing? It goes back to Gareth Bacon’s question, which is a good question, about the hierarchy of regulation. An extension of that is, “Who do you enforce against?”, in terms of what Mark said. It is important for regulators to talk to each other about hierarchy, who owns it and what you are going to do in the detail across different bits of legislation, but you need to make sure you are not enforcing against people who do not hold power in the system, particularly the resident management companies. There might be some rogue RMCs out there where you might need to do it, but I have not yet come across that situation.
I need people out there to hear that, certainly from our perspective, this measure would be a tool of absolute last resort against those entities, because most often they do not have the power even to resolve their own issues. I want to be really clear about that, because I know there is a heightened level of anxiety about what the Bill might do to those people, as if we are being forced as regulators into doing things to RMCs. We are not. We have choices as regulators. This is a great tool for some of the people you identify. Personally, I do not think it is designed to punch down at RMCs. I think it would be completely inappropriate. We would do everything else in our power to help resolve the situation with them before you got anywhere close to this.
The Chair
We have less than five minutes left, so I am afraid some colleagues will be disappointed.
Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)
Q
Lord Roe: Mark, Charlie and I dealt with this one, so I am going to volunteer Charlie, who is a bit of a victim really, while you think about it.
Charlie Pugsley: If it is the building in Dagenham, we have engaged consistently with residents since then. We are also working closely with London Fire Brigade. I have to be careful, even in Committee, not to talk about things that could prejudice a live investigation. One of the things we have heard loud and clear is about the knock-on impact of the case, where the entity has become dissolved and its estate is in effect taking money from the people who have already suffered the loss of their properties. That is one of the things that we are feeding back to the Department and other regulators. Both we and London Fire Brigade are still working on that. But we are both very much sighted on—this comes back to Lord Roe’s point that you need to approach enforcement with intelligence—in this case, what do we do if the only impact further impacts on residents?
Helen Fisher: May I add to that? Lord Roe made this point earlier. I think we all welcome the Bill. The behavioural point is an important one, and there are a couple of things on that. This is not just about remediation; it is about safety for residents and leaseholders while we get to their buildings, and there are thousands of buildings. We are starting to work with the social sector and the private sector to ensure that transparency is there. One of my goals is making sure that all residents and leaseholders understand when, and understand that they are going to be safe in the interim.
On the behaviour, it is not just about doing everything in your power to step through a design and remediation programme, which is undoubtedly incredibly complex. It is also about how you as a building owner are compliant with resident and leaseholder safety while you wait for key remediation works to go ahead. There is a lot more to do in that space.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
Q
Lord Roe: The quick answer is that some of it helps, but my message—perhaps this is a good point to summarise from our point of view—is that there is a culture and leadership piece that needs to be understood in industry. We have watched industry really up its game over the past year and a half, so this is not a chance to bash them up, because I think people have worked very hard, but we still see appalling communication at an operational level from operational teams.
Even when the chief exec is leading the strategic entity well—we are talking about some large developers here—something happens at the operational level and they treat residents with disdain. There is no way you can enforce your way out of that, to be honest. We need the industry to take responsibility—even if it is bad news, please can you just communicate with your residents in a way that puts them, as a human, at the centre? Time and time again, that is where it starts to go wrong.
Charlie Pugsley: This is where all of us on the panel will communicate directly with those entities. We will put it in writing, even where it is outside the duty of resident communication, for example, and we will be really clear about what we expect.
Lord Roe: Again, the offer here is that if you have individual examples where the weight of the regulator will help, we are in with chief execs of the big and small developers all the time. We frequently have conversations in which we ask them to up their game, even if we cannot enforce it.
The Chair
Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses for their evidence. We will now change to the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Dan Daly, Penny Pender and Spencer Sutcliff gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the National Fire Chiefs Council and Jonathan Smith, the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade. For this session, we have until 12.40 pm. Will the witnesses please briefly introduce themselves for the record?
Dan Daly: My name is Dan Daly, and I am the director of service delivery improvement at the National Fire Chiefs Council.
Penny Pender: My name is Penny Pender. I am the head of policy at the National Fire Chiefs Council.
Spencer Sutcliff: I am Spencer Sutcliff, the deputy commissioner at the London Fire Brigade, representing Jonathan Smith, the commissioner.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Dan Daly: Currently, the answer would be no. For the work that has been ongoing, there have been some improvements to the monitoring of people who are undertaking risk assessments. Some work ahead—important work—is on the competency and regulating the role of the fire risk assessor. At the moment, more work is being undertaken by fire risk assessors, and that has been monitored. There is probably an overexaggeration of the levels of competency by individuals. Looking at the membership of professional bodies, alongside that competency route, is one of the ways to address the current shortfall. I admire the ambition in the Bill; it is important that we put high expectations on the delivery and remediation of buildings, but a number of aspects—one is the competency of fire risk assessors and access to them—are the Achilles heel of that ambition for the timeframe.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Dan Daly: It is a fair challenge. As I say, personally, I quite like the idea of pushing or challenging timetables. Having said that, a number of the unresolved issues in the Bill we were talking about three years ago probably, and they remain unresolved. There is a pace to delivering the Bill and putting it in place where I think there are some weaknesses, and where those challenges are still present.
One of the aspects where we will be challenged is, to an extent, the pressing timeline to have a Bill in place, because it has been a long time coming. What we are seeing behind some of that is that it then pushes some real pressure on to other regulators, particularly around how we will work together under a collaboration and who takes the lead, which was part of the questions to the last panel. Those pressures are highly challenging, and it might have been better to have resolved them more satisfactorily before the Bill was launched.
James Asser
Q
We cannot answer what is actually wrong with the building, but everything stems from that in terms of whether we need to be clearing people out. In the first instance, everyone phoned the fire brigade, because they thought, “Hey, it’s not safe,” but it sits outside the fire brigade’s powers because it is not a fire issue; it is a structural one. In terms of your powers and where powers lie, where those responsible fail to take building safety seriously or to act when they should, what differences would clearer duties and stronger consequences make? Would additional powers in your remit be helpful in achieving that?
Dan Daly: As the previous panel talked about, the Bill provides a number of tools to a number of different regulators, and that is helpful and should be applauded. In terms of some of the unresolved questions and historical challenges that Lord Roe was talking about, the Bill will struggle to address some of the structural issues, and we will still find ourselves with the issue of who takes the lead in some circumstances. Because the issue falls back to one of public safety, fire and rescue services are often the agency that will stay around, even when we do not necessarily have an ability to affect the outcome, particularly when it comes to structural issues and issues of construction competence down the line. We will be there predominately to support residents and to try to protect their safety.
I am not sure whether it tackles the historical issues. They are some of the unresolved elements of competency throughout the system that we identified and were talking about three or even four years ago, when the Bill was first mooted. I am not sure whether it does enough to tackle those, but it does give some responsibility to regulators elsewhere, which does add value.
Spencer Sutcliff: The example in your constituency is somewhat symbolic of the wider building construction issues over the last few years. I have great sympathy for the impacted residents; it is a terrible situation for them. Dan Daly is correct that the London Fire Brigade has been drawn into this issue despite not having the powers, as it stands, to resolve it—although we naturally have responsibilities around emergency response and other contingency arrangements.
We welcome the Bill, and the work that we will be done to clarify the enforcing responsibilities of each responsible agency will be welcomed—we are a long way through that as it stands anyway, with various protocols and long-standing work and arrangements—but it will not necessarily resolve this particular issue, and I suspect that other unique challenges will show themselves over the years, like this one has more recently.
The Chair
Mr Asser, you want to repeat the declaration you made at the start of proceedings.
James Asser
Yes. I am sorry; I should have done that beforehand. My partner works for the London Fire Brigade in fire safety issues.
Sarah Gibson
Q
Penny Pender: That is a really good question. It depends on what you want to be achieved through the Bill. From the point of view of controlling the risk of fire spread on external walls—that fire safety point of view—we are satisfied that the PAS does what it needs to do. Obviously, it does not deal with how the building should have been constructed to begin with or those wider issues, so if that is something that people are looking for it to resolve, they will remain frustrated. Even though we are happy that it would deal with those critical life-safety issues, you are right to highlight that some of the wider issues, such as insurance, would not be addressed through that means.
Spencer Sutcliff: We think that PAS 9980 is an appropriate assessment, and we would not want, necessarily, to bring in further methodologies that could confuse the arrangement or provide further inconsistencies. It goes back to the root cause, which the previous panel touched on a number of times: the competency of the assessor. When you are using an assessment that always has an element of subjectivity, you are entirely reliant on the competence of the assessor, and we have seen various examples of different assessors coming to different conclusions using that assessment. There is some ongoing concern.
We really welcome and would like to see more of the auditing arrangements for Homes England. Certainly in the initial stages, I would like to see Homes England audit those premises that have been deemed “tolerable” and not just look at the ones that are effectively failing the assessment, because there needs to be confidence that those assessments are done in a consistent manner. We are back, a little bit, to the root cause around who is doing the assessments in the first place.
Penny Pender: If I might build on that, as Spencer says, no matter what methodology you select, if the people using that methodology do not have the right competencies to begin with, you will come across those issues. For the time being, we need that methodology. It is what we have available to us, so changing it at this point might not be helpful. I am aware that the PAS has been updated recently to make it clear that you have to have regard to and think about the wider risks in the building, so it should ultimately lead to those risks being identified. It is just a challenge for people, when they do identify them, how to address them.
Spencer Sutcliff: There is extensive work ongoing around the regulation of those assessors, and we have standards in place. We do not yet have formal regulation of who is permitted to carry out those assessments; that is a work in progress, and we really encourage that the pace of that work is maintained and that it is brought in as soon as possible.
Fleur Anderson
Q
Do you think that the Bill’s co-operation framework will help? The LFB, the borough council, the local management committee and the developer are all involved in conversations, but who can the residents go to for that independent assessment to be assured that the building is safe? Is there anything more that can be done in the Bill to help in that situation?
Spencer Sutcliff: I think the Bill provides a sufficient framework for the work to be done to clarify the exact position around the responsibilities of each of the enforcing entities. It is not unusual at all for the London Fire Brigade to have protocols and memorandums of understanding with different enforcing authorities. For example, we have a long-standing MOU in London with the local authority around houses in multiple occupation, because we both have enforcement powers under the fire safety order and the Housing Act. It is right and proper that we distinguish the type of building, the type of occupancy and who is the lead enforcing authority. To act at the same time is not good practice; it creates inconsistency and would not be correct.
I think the framework proposed in the Bill is sufficient. We have already drafted an enforcement protocol with the Bill in mind, so the timescale proposed in the Bill to set out that framework is suitable and can be met.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Q
In terms of the fire safety of buildings, are you content that the Bill, as currently structured, is sufficiently robust to achieve the safety inspections and sign-off that will be required in the future?
Dan Daly: One thing we have been really clear about ever since the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire is that a whole-system approach is required to ensure building safety. Dame Judith quite rightly identified the need for the whole regime to be looked at. There are still elements within that—they have been referenced today—around competency, which is still an issue. There are the general skills requirements both across the construction sector and within fire risk assessors; we talked about fire engineering skills and those with the technical ability to address some of the risks that we now face, particularly when dealing with a historical property.
Bob Blackman
Q
Dan Daly: It comes down not just to competency; when I talk about competency, I talk about ethical behaviours and how that is controlled through membership bodies and sign-out. I do not think it is an ideal situation. It is certainly a situation that was addressed by some of Dame Judith Hackitt’s comments in that original review.
On the point about a whole-system approach, while the Bill talks about remediation and provides some useful tools, it does not provide the complete answer, because there are historical defects in fire safety that are internal, not just about the external wall of the building. We still find challenges in respect of how those are addressed.
We talked earlier about the suitability of the PAS. The PAS does allow for some weighing up of other features within the building, in terms of how the risk is mitigated. That is a step forward from the combined advice note, which was pretty all-in or all-out and did not allow for some of that balance. But we have issues that are still sitting within the buildings, and there are a number of things we could be doing better and stronger to ensure that buildings are safe overall and to build the confidence of residents, which we talked about earlier.
Bob Blackman
Q
Dan Daly: To your latter point, it is the role of the Building Safety Regulator to make sure that these things are built correctly from this point on. The last panel talked about the work in that regard.
I think the responsibilities for remediation are clear in the Bill, which assigns responsibility through the “polluter pays” principle, so it is much clearer who is responsible for repairing buildings. Our ability to enforce that would be improved if some of the protocols were agreed around who collaborates and who leads. I note the work in the LFB around writing protocol at the moment, but elsewhere in the country there are some really ambitious and difficult timeframes; if we press ahead as we are now, something in the region of 157 individual partnership protocols will need to be written so that each regulator understands its role in holding the relevant persons to account. That is a challenge.
While the Bill makes it clearer who is responsible, who is going to lead the charge to hold those people to account could be made even clearer through something like a review of the LACORS protocol that we currently have, to make sure that those things are in place and applied consistently across the country. As I said, I commend colleagues in London for being on the front foot in getting that agreement in place. If that agreement was adopted as a national standard, it would bring some consistency of approach across the country and some confidence in how these things are dealt with.
Noah Law
Q
Dan Daly: I will pick up on your last question and then hand over to my colleague on the independent auditing, because we have been talking about that. We already have a duty to collaborate, so that is not new, but providing some clarity around how regulators and agencies will work together in a consistent way that is applied nationally will improve it. I am not sure that it offers us individually anything more than we currently have, but across the wider sector, that duty to collaborate is not unhelpful.
Penny Pender: The point in the Bill about solidifying independent auditing is crucial, and I agree with everything that Helen on the previous panel said. That is a really welcome part of the Bill, and it will hopefully assist in these cases. If I may speak to the concern that Mr Blackman mentioned, just because something has planning permission does not mean that it meets the functional requirements of the building regulations. If those buildings went up with combustible cladding on them, they do not meet the building regulations, full stop. Hopefully there are sufficient powers across the built environment to deal with that, and we would hope to see the Building Safety Regulator and others step in where needed.
There might be room for examining the implementation dates for the Bill, because there are some possible gaps. The Bill will only apply, I think, to buildings that were built before April ’22. There are some periods of time there, such as the possible 15-month gap between when the Building Safety Act came into force and when gateway 2 started, that might bear examination and would be good to look into. There was also an eight-month gap between the Bill coming into force and the review of the combustible cladding ban.
You might recall that there was a combustible cladding ban put in place for buildings over 18 metres; that was reviewed and it was clarified that it would apply from 11 metres, but there was an eight-month gap during which it might have been incorrectly perceived by some in industry—even though we would disagree—that it was acceptable to put combustible material on to those buildings. Even though we would say ultimately that it still does not meet the functional requirements, some may have misunderstood that, so it would be worth examining the timeframes in the Bill to make sure that that is okay.
Rachel Blake
Q
Penny Pender: That is a good question. I would suggest that it is possibly not necessary. There is already a lead regulator’s protocol in existence. It is known as the LACORS guidance, produced by local authority co-ordinators of regulatory services. All authorities would have had local agreements in place aligning to that at some point. The challenge is that it was not kept up to date, particularly following the implementation of the Building Safety Act.
We have been advocating for it to be updated since then. That could be achieved without waiting for primary legislation, and it would be helpful if it was done once and done nationally, and then local regulators were given the option to adopt it or to develop their own ones if they felt that was necessary. As Spencer said, London has done a lot of the heavy lifting already with the pan-London fire safety protocol, so that could easily be lifted and shifted and adopted nationally.
As Dan said, the impact assessment identifies that outside of mayoral arrangements, there could be anywhere up to 157 local partnership agreements that would have to be developed and signed off within only a four-month time period. Our concern is that that could distract from local enforcement on the ground, because in some of the smaller authorities, the staff who are needed for enforcement would have to be diverted towards developing the agreements or writing to the Secretary of State to justify why they have not. We think it should be done nationally and done once.
Rachel Blake
Q
Penny Pender: Yes, absolutely. I am sure they will be. We will be encouraging our members to do exactly that.
Dan Daly: With everyone tuning in independently, though, there is a risk of inconsistency, so some central co-ordination would bring the consistency we are looking for.
Rachel Blake
Q
Penny Pender: One of the benefits of those types of protocols is that they identify the local working arrangements when there is a need for escalation, so it would be dealt with within the scope of those.
Rachel Blake
Q
Dan Daly: We have been saying collectively that what is in here at the minute does not do the work that we would like it to do. We would like that national co-ordination, and within that agreement, for there to be sign-up from partners on who owns the lead in certain circumstances, so it should not require someone to step in and mediate.
Without that agreement, there is more risk of delay as people debate inconsistently through local agreements, or you have a stand-off between agencies because there is no agreement in place. We can tackle that by moving the national agreement forward more quickly to remove the doubt and maybe answer the questions you are asking.
Florence Eshalomi
Q
Spencer Sutcliff: Naturally, we are very supportive of RPEEPs and personal evacuation plans. However, our preference would be for the measure to go further and look at fire risk within homes, rather than just being focused on the escape routes.
Dan Daly: I think there are other benefits, one of which is about providing extra assurance on the plans that have been put in place. We know that fires start inside individual dwellings; they rarely start in the common parts of a building. There is also an opportunity to ensure the maintenance of some of the passive fire safety protection that is designed within a building—whether that is where people have access to common service risers, or where they have made adaptions to fire doors and things inside those properties. That is part of the building integrity overall.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Dan Daly: I think the partnership agreement I was talking about would set out very clearly, in certain circumstances, who was leading on what. At the moment, where that is not as clear as it could be, and where there is a reliance on separate entities coming up with these in quick order after the Bill is passed, that leads to the possibility of inconsistency in how they are done. Of course, they do not always come to those agreements quickly, because there will be different viewpoints, so I do not think it would be unhelpful to do that ahead of time.
Sarah Coombes
Q
Penny Pender: I think that the Bill provides a few more tools in the toolbox, as some of our colleagues said earlier. I think the introduction of some of those financial penalties is really interesting and useful to see. The proof will be in the pudding, so it is certainly worth trying them in certain circumstances and seeing how it goes. We hope that they will be helpful. I know that some fire and rescue services have potential interest in those being expanded beyond just the Bill to the application of the whole fire safety order. I think this will be a really useful opportunity to see how it goes, and then to learn from that. Hopefully, it will make a difference.
Peter Fortune
Q
Spencer Sutcliff: That has been a fairly long-standing concern of ours. We have obviously prioritised that and done a lot of work in-house, and our competency levels—as we would determine them—have improved fairly significantly over the last few years. We certainly had a moment in time when we lost quite a high number of highly competent and experienced staff to the private sector, because we simply could not compete financially. We have been well supported by the London Mayor and our GLA colleagues to make arrangements to reduce that impact a little, and that has had some positive effects. Recently, over the last 24 months, we have thankfully had much less of that.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions to this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.
Examination of Witness
Kate Green gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Kate Green, the deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester. I want to confirm, Kate, that you can hear and see us in the Committee. Under the programme order, we have until 1 pm for this panel. Will you briefly introduce yourself for the record?
Kate Green: Yes, and thank you for the invitation to address the Committee. I am Kate Green. I am the deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester with responsibility for safer and stronger communities.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Kate Green: I think it is true to say, Mr Bacon, that one of the things that residents are looking for is greater certainty, and this is a very complex regulatory and enforcement landscape. We would certainly like to see greater clarity, not necessarily in the Bill, but perhaps in supporting documentation and guidance on how different regulators and enforcers interact with one another, on the escalation processes, and on who is responsible for taking enforcement action in specific circumstances, so that residents can be confident in how the processes work and that they work smoothly and seamlessly.
Gareth Bacon
Q
Kate Green: Capacity is a real concern across the whole system, including for local authorities, as you rightly identify. We have welcomed, and Greater Manchester fire and rescue service, which I oversee on the mayor’s behalf, has welcomed the additional funding that we have received, but it will be important that all new burdens on local authorities are funded adequately and sustainably. The enforcement requirement—that regulatory role—is here to stay; it is not just a one-off, albeit that we clearly have a surge of activity and demand as we remediate a significant number of buildings in Greater Manchester, as part of the legacy of the appalling Grenfell Tower fire nearly 10 years ago.
I think it is important to recognise that particularly across fire safety enforcement and inspection we are struggling to recruit and, more significantly, to retain staff. There are real pressures and competition from private sector employers, who can offer much higher salaries. In Greater Manchester, across all 10 of our local authorities, we are giving high priority to protecting and supporting our residents, but there is no doubt that in times of considerable financial pressure on local government, as you identify, that is a challenge—and it is one that the Government will need to ensure is adequately resourced, so that local authorities and other statutory services can properly fulfil their responsibilities.
Florence Eshalomi
Q
Kate Green: The first thing is to provide greater certainty and clarity about what is encompassed in the Government’s remediation commitments. We very much welcome the Bill and the funding already being made available to us to take steps to support our residents. It is useful to have those much more effective funding pathways.
We particularly welcomed the improvements in the funding process through the cladding safety scheme. I pay tribute to Homes England and Helen Fisher, whom I think you have heard from already this morning. That scheme has been a real game changer in enabling funding to begin to move into the system so that buildings can be remediated.
I welcome the provisions in the Bill on mitigations for residents who are exercising the right to manage their buildings or are in resident management companies, although we have concerns that there remains a risk of penalties and sanctions for those residents. We have made progress in Greater Manchester as a result of the attention that the Government have given to remediation of buildings with fire safety defects in recent years. According to MHCLG data, remediation has been completed for 152 buildings in Greater Manchester, but that means that we still have 181, as at quarter 4 last year, for which remediation is deemed outstanding. I would also point to the buildings that require remediation for other defects that will not be covered by the scope of this legislation.
Florence Eshalomi
Q
Kate Green: This is a helpful provision; it potentially gives regulators a timelier and more proportionate enforcement option, but we would not want that to arrive at a situation where commercial developers, who often have very deep pockets, considered that a financial penalty was an acceptable cost of delay and that they could afford to hold back, address other priorities that they might have and just pay the price of that. We really do see those penalties as a backstop to other effective enforcement action.
We would also draw attention to the need for the capacity to use that civil route to secure compliance. There will need to be investigation, evidence gathering, decision making and dealing with appeals, and all that will require sustainable long-term funding in to the system. A civil route is certainly welcome. However, our other concern is about buildings subject to the developer contract, where using a contractual route rather than a statutory basis to ensure compliance puts more hurdles, if you like, in the way of residents seeking to have their buildings remediated.
Sarah Gibson
Q
Kate Green: Yes. Unfortunately, I did not hear Ms Fisher’s evidence this morning, but I do share those concerns. There will be an audit process, but that will be a dip sample, in a way; there will not be capacity for Homes England to audit every fire risk assessment that is undertaken. We will need to know that we have a robust audit process and that Homes England has the resources to carry that out.
We also need to be clear that where fire risks are deemed tolerable, there is an appropriate response from the insurance industry, which recognises that they must have full regard to that audit process based on the PAS 9980 framework that you referred to, and that, if fire risks are deemed tolerable, residents should not be penalised by higher insurance premiums, because effectively the insurance now has that assurance that the building can be insured cost-effectively.
Sarah Gibson
Q
Kate Green: I share that concern. The Government will need to ensure that the fire risk assessments and the decisions of fire risk assessors are robust and consistent. Otherwise, there are avenues open for people to game the system or to obtain an assessment that is more favourable to their own interests.
There is a risk there, and I hope that in the course of the passage of the Bill the Government will think about how they can ensure that that fire risk assessment PAS 9980 framework is fully robust and can give full assurance to residents.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)
Q
Kate Green: I think that the mayoral combined authority has had and can continue to have a role in helping to speed up the process. In Greater Manchester, shortly after the appalling fire in Grenfell Tower in 2017, the then mayor established a high-rise taskforce, chaired by Paul Dennett, the Salford city council mayor. Paul now chairs a high-rise oversight group where we are able to convene local authorities and the Greater Manchester fire and rescue service. Homes England attends, as do the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, housing providers, developers and residents. They can all be convened around one remediation programme.
Of course you will know, as members of the Committee, that we and other mayoral combined authorities published our local remediation acceleration plans in recent months. Those plans are the articulation of the whole-system approach that I think mayors and mayoral combined authorities can help to put in place. We have been able to use our plan to do a number of things, including, obviously, to understand more clearly what buildings are affected in Greater Manchester and what the nature of the risk is in each of those buildings. We have been able to be close to and very fully engaged with our residents, and to ensure that a residents-first focus sits at the heart of the work that we are doing in Greater Manchester and the work that we want to see nationally.
We have been able to bring the social housing partners to the table, which has been exceptionally useful in considering how we get social properties remediated and how we can work with our social housing providers in Greater Manchester to do that as swiftly and as effectively as possible. We can escalate matters when they become stalled. We have also been able to lobby Government; I think it has been helpful that Greater Manchester has been able to present a concerted voice to successive Governments for funding and for action—now resulting in this legislation.
There is a lot more that we hope to do with our local remediation acceleration plan in the coming months and years, and at the heart of that will be resident engagement. Our residents continue to live with a very significant impact on their mental health and their financial position, and in many cases with continuing uncertainty about when their buildings will be fully remediated. I see the work that we are able to do as a mayoral combined authority, maintaining the spotlight on the lived experience of our residents and reflecting that back both into the action that we can take and into the action that we ask national Government to take, as being crucial.
The final thing I will say, given that I have the very specific role of oversight of the fire and rescue service, is that in Greater Manchester we have been able to prioritise having the right capacity in the Greater Manchester fire and rescue service to support the regulatory regime—the inspection and enforcement programmes that are required. That work, and the oversight of the implementation of all the recommendations that came out of the two Grenfell Tower inquiry reports, is being taken forward. We can oversee all that through a series of governance structures that are led by our chief fire officer. One of the things that mayoral combined authorities are in a very useful position to do is to draw all those different players in a geography together.
Peter Fortune
Q
Kate Green: On right to manage and resident management companies—although obviously we are also concerned that all charges are eventually at risk of being passed through to residents—the first thing I would say is that they are already experiencing quite significant financial burdens, because they are unremunerated for what is in many cases a substantial workload. Despite the welcome mitigations in the Bill, they also still ultimately face the risk of criminal sanctions, so we would certainly like attention to be given to that.
In terms of service charges, there are concerns around transparency; residents must be fully informed about the way in which service charges are made up. In my past life as a constituency MP, I think we saw that some professional commercial managing agents were more transparent than others. There needs to be that ability to ensure that the conduct of commercial managing agents is in the interests of residents—obviously they will be acting in the interests of their principal, but we should be very clear about their obligations on behalf of their principal to residents. Frankly, appeals are the last resort, are they not? What we actually want to see is a robust system, which ensures that service charges are fair and proportionate, and that no resident is required to pay, through their service charge or otherwise, for faults and defects in their building that are not of their making.
Peter Fortune
Q
Kate Green: I would certainly want to see more protection for residents who are acting in the right to manage and resident management company space. Prescribing more closely what can and cannot be reflected through service charges may be something that the Government should explore.
Sagal Abdi-Wali
Q
Kate Green: The difference ought to be, from the perspective of the resident, that the work gets done first and that the argument about who pays does not delay the work to make their homes safe. A backstop needs to be exactly what it claims to be: a backstop. What we actually want is a system that ensures, much more swiftly, much earlier and much more effectively, that people fulfil the remediation obligations imposed on them.
As I say, we are probably particularly concerned about those developers whose remediation activity will be overseen through the medium of the developer contracts. We still have quite a complex landscape, I think, of ways in which residents might try to compel remediation. A backstop is necessary, but we would much prefer to see a left shift, ensuring that the obligation to remediate is carried out by responsible actors at the earliest point and is compliant with regulatory requirements from the start of the process.
Bob Blackman
Q
Kate Green: There are two things: one is that we would like to see the Bill extended to cover defects that are not related to cladding or external walls; the second is workforce capacity. By that I mean capacity both in the regulatory sector—fire authorities, fire services, local authorities and other regulators—and in the construction sector. The tension that the Government are managing between meeting their house building targets, which we support, and getting existing buildings remediated in an industrial sector that is facing significant workforce pressures is a real concern to us.
The Chair
Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions this morning. On behalf of the Committee, I thank you, Kate, for your evidence.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Sarah Coombes.)