Building Safety Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

If the Minister cannot accept this modest but important improvement to the Bill, I hope that he may commit to finding another way to formally incorporate his department’s collaborative procurement guidance in the new regime, perhaps through secondary legislation. The guidance is clearly intended to be part of the regulatory framework, but I do not see how this will happen as it stands. Guidance is by its nature voluntary and past experience shows all too often that the construction sector does not do voluntary. Some sort of statutory underpinning is needed to ensure that the fundamental importance of procurement and contractual arrangements to the building safety regime embodied in this Bill is recognised and acted on. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and others. I had the privilege to be on the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which reported six years ago with Building Better Places. We had extensive evidence from Public Health England on the impacts of the built environment on health. That built on the work done by Michael Marmot on the social determinants of health and the evidence of the cost to the nation of poor housing. In our report, we recommended that those working in housing should take account of the health impacts of their decisions. The relevant paragraph of the government response to our report said:

“The Government recognises the importance of considering health as part of the planning process and believes health impacts should be considered as part of the wider policy environment.”


The plea that we heard from the noble Lords, Lord Crisp and Lord Bethell, to integrate these factors and consider them at every stage has been supported by the evidence for many years. I hope that the Government will listen to the evidence that they themselves took on board in responding to our report.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in Committee but was unable to speak to it, so I welcome the opportunity to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech that he made a few moments ago. I do so having been responsible for building control under the Thatcher and Major Administrations.

No one could object to the aspirations behind the amendment and the Healthy Homes Act campaign and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically. I understand that so far the Government have objected to the proposal on the grounds that this is a matter for planning rather than for building regulations. The boundary between the two is inevitably not clearly marked and many people think that, if they have planning consent, that is the end of their interface with the local authority.

I have just one suggestion to make. The Minister may take the view that some of the objectives in the TCPA brief fall on the planning side rather than the building regulations side. I quote from its manifesto, which says that homes should

“be built to design out crime and be secure … all new homes should … provide access to sustainable transport and walkable services, including green infrastructure and play space”

and should have a minimum liveable space. Those all seem to be entirely reasonable requests. If my noble friend takes that view and believes that they are not appropriate to this Bill, can he give an assurance that they will be incorporated into the next planning Bill so that we can get to the same destination, albeit via a different route?

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[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I too support Amendment 262 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, to which I have put my name. I will not go through all the reasons why it makes common sense but we have had the British Standard for well over 10 years and it is more observed in the omission than the commission. We really must make progress at this stage.

The Minister gave valuable assurances in Committee; the reason that we need to press him today is to get some clarity about the timetable for this. I feel that, if we cannot get a guarantee that it will be not only consulted upon but implemented within a 12-month period, we will have to regard that as unsatisfactory and press this amendment. Can he tell us whether he can meet that 12-month deadline for consultation and implementation and, if not, what the problem is and what the timetable will be? The standard has been around for a decade and it seems that this is a “just get the finger out” moment. I am sure that he is a “just get the finger out” sort of Minister.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for meeting me and the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, yesterday, and for sharing the correspondence that he had had over the Building Regulations Advisory Committee. He explained why it would be easier to update a statutory approved document than primary legislation, and the need for such statutory regulation to be reviewed rapidly and changed as things go on.

I endorse what has been said by others who have spoken, in that there is an urgency to this. Around many parts of the UK at the moment, we see what is almost an explosion of housebuilding and of other building sites. It would be really tragic if the Bill went through but those buildings do not have staircases in them which are fit for the population who are going to use them, and if we do not see a real drop in accidents in these new buildings. The old housing stock is obviously really difficult and much of it has inappropriate staircases, but we are talking here about new build. Because of that, there is an urgency and I hope that, when the Minister responds, he gives us a really good and tight timetable.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, as a former retailer, I have a good deal of sympathy with Amendment 254 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster. I agree with him that there is a gap here with online material posing a risk to safety, which is not the case with normal retail sales. In summing up, can my noble friend the Minister give us a bit more confidence as to when that gap will be filled? The Government are often too slow.

In that vein, I very much welcome the progress made by my noble friend the Minister on staircases, which are the subject of Amendment 262. I agree that the approach outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, seems to make sense and allow us the opportunity to get on with this consumer issue as well.

I share the concerns underlying Amendment 264 from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. There is a real problem of shortages in the built environment workforce, as highlighted in the Built Environment Committee’s report on demand for housing—a committee on which several Members of this House sit and which I have the honour to chair. However, to be honest, the amendment is overcomplicated. The direction of travel is right but I am doubtful that we should accept an amendment in this form.

On Amendment 261, of course we need improved homes; cold homes are very bad for health, as has been shown by many studies. However, this is an uncosted proposal. It will have huge compliance costs for homeowners—admittedly, over a reasonably long period—and I really do not think that we are in a position to add it to this Bill today.