High Rise Social Housing: Reducing Fire Risk

Debate between Karen Buck and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reducing fire risk in high rise social housing.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairship, Ms Rees, and to speak about the subject at last, because I have been trying to obtain this debate for some time. It is a shame it clashes with the Building Safety Bill evidence session, but that shows how important these issues are to the House, and they will remain so for a considerable time.

The human tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire was apparent from the morning of 14 June 2017 as the world woke up to the horrifying images of people killed in their own homes in a particularly savage manner. Four years later, the scale and depth of that tragedy are only now being explored. The Grenfell inquiry is still years from resolution, however, interim investigations, such as the Hackitt report, have provided some clue to the comprehensive failures in the building industry. The Government have been slow to legislate, but earlier this year the Fire Safety Act 2021 was passed and Parliament is currently considering the Building Safety Bill.

Much focus has rightly been on the priorities for action, such as the removal of flammable cladding from the exterior of tall buildings and who will pay for the huge remedial costs, in particular whether the costs should fall on leaseholders given they had no knowledge of the risks they were taking on and do not have the means to meet bills that, in some cases, are higher than the price they paid for their homes. Members may wish to raise these issues and others today, but my purpose in requesting the debate was to highlight two aspects of the crisis exposed by Grenfell that have not received sufficient attention. It is not by coincidence that they both relate to social housing.

Anyone who watched Daniel Hewitt’s distressing documentary, “Surviving Squalor: Britain’s Housing Shame”, on ITV on Sunday night and saw some of the conditions social housing tenants are living in in 2021 would have been sickened by how far the sector has fallen from its post-war pride and ambition. I am sure every Member present has horror stories of neglect, under-investment and poor service to relate, but Grenfell has exposed how the failure of some Governments to invest and of some landlords to show a duty of care has become a threat not only to the quality of life of millions of tenants and leaseholders, but to life itself.

In the second part of my speech, I want to deal with the causes of fire in social housing, especially electrical fires, and why more is not being done to prevent them. First, I want to comment on the consequences for social housing landlords and tenants of the costs of undertaking fire safety works. This morning, Inside Housing—all of us, particularly the Government, should be grateful for its investigative work throughout this crisis—published a story that One Housing, one of the G15’s supersized housing associations, recorded a deficit of £25 million for the last financial year. In the same year, it spent £27.3 million on fire safety work to its stock.

Over the next five years, One Housing expects to spend £200 million on such works. Clarion, another of the G15, estimates it will spend £150 million in the next four years, and in total the 12 biggest housing associations will spend an estimated £3 billion over the next decade. Yes, that is right: 12 housing associations will spend £3 billion when the Government’s total building safety fund stands at £5 billion, and the National Housing Federation says the total bill for the sector will be £10 billion. Clarion told me that it expects to receive £5.4 million from the BSF of the £150 million it will spend. That shortfall is significant, not only for the association as a housebuilder and landlord, as we shall see, but for its leaseholders. Like most associations, it will try every other source of revenue, including builders, developers and the BSF. If all else fails, it will bill the leaseholders. Tenants lack even that mitigation; there is no BSF for them. The majority of the costs social landlords must bear will come from their existing income streams—mainly rents—or from diverting funds from other services, from repairs to new developments. Expect more Daniel Hewitt documentaries in the years ahead.

I contacted the main social landlords operating in my constituency that are tackling significant remedial works with a series of questions, including how much they were spending on remediation. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham said it will apply to the BSF but

“the remainder is from the Housing Revenue Account.”

To its credit, it added that

“leaseholders are not being charged”.

Catalyst says that

“overall, we expect to invest over £109m remediating our high-rise portfolio”.

It has secured £22 million from the BSF, but will charge leaseholders where grants are not available. Shepherds Bush Housing says that

“the total cost of our building safety programme is estimated to be over £40m”.

For buildings under 18 metres, or where grant is not forthcoming, it is concerned that it may have to pass on costs to leaseholders. Notting Hill Genesis estimates a bill of £41 million for the last financial year, and will pass on costs where third-party funding is not forthcoming.

Almost every landlord said the unrecovered costs of fire safety works will impact significantly on core functions and other duties. That means fewer, slower repairs and fewer staff to manage properties and to liaise with residents. Members who already have a full inbox of housing casework will groan, as will tenants and leaseholders, at the prospect of a continued rapid decline in the resources and services available.

The most shocking effect will be on development programmes and new home building. Shelter estimates the need for 90,000 new social homes a year. Last year, 6,000 were built. Earlier this year, the Financial Times carried a report based on evidence from Clarion, Peabody, Network Homes and the L&Q group—four of the biggest landlords—that the number of affordable homes built over the next five years would fall by 40% as a direct consequence of fire safety works. Small and medium-sized associations have even less room for manoeuvre. Shepherds Bush Housing estimates a 50% cut in the development budget and less planned maintenance spend.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is quite right to focus on the implications of these costs and how they will affect the repairs and development programmes. Does he also recognise an additional issue that the Government have not addressed over a number of years? Local authority housing contains a high proportion of leaseholders within that stock. Even where a local authority wishes to carry out fire safety works, as was the case in mine, the fact that there is no clarity about the right to go into leasehold properties and to require leaseholders to have the works done means that it does not even get the fire safety works carried out, and many tenants are left at risk as a consequence.

[Andy Slaughter]

As always, my hon. Friend is on top of her brief. That is a very important point that the Minister and shadow Minister may wish to address. Many people who looked at the Building Safety Bill think that the provisions for access are inadequate or overly bureaucratic, and simply will not work. We have already seen that happen with the problems that Wandsworth Council has had with retrofitting of sprinklers, where there is resistance from leaseholders. There has to be a way, as with gas safety and so on, of ensuring that where the safety of the occupants of a block as a whole is at risk, it is possible to carry out works in a comprehensive way.

Impact of Floods in North Westminster

Debate between Karen Buck and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of floods in Westminster North.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, in this short debate.

I am grateful to the Minister for being here today and for this opportunity to raise an issue that has been hugely important to my constituents this summer. I will ask for her help in holding Thames Water to account for its very poor performance in the aftermath of the floods in my constituency and in getting responses from it to a number of unanswered questions about how the floods occurred. In doing so, this debate will also have implications for water companies and flood preparation in other parts of the country.

Before I turn to the specific events that happened in Westminster North, I will briefly refer to the context in which they happened, because they clearly took place in the context of rising flood risks, arising in particular from climate change. We know that climate change is impacting harder and faster than even our worst fears a few years ago, and that devastating floods have wreaked havoc across the world, from New York to Germany and elsewhere. We have to accept the reality that extreme weather events are the new normal. Also, while poorer communities are always at greater risk of damage from such extreme events, floods or other kinds of extreme weather—such as the extremely dry weather that causes forest fires—are no respecters of postcodes.

So when Thames Water points to an exceptionally slow-moving weather system concentrating unusually high rainfall in a particular area, as was the case in my constituency in July, it may indeed be right. The question is whether such a powerful monopoly provider as Thames Water should have done more to anticipate and prepare for such events. Also, given the history, which I will refer to in a moment, why did the preparations that had been made fail and why was Thames Water’s immediate response to the flooding so inadequate?

Westminster City Council also has duties in this area. After the introduction of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, responsibility for local flood risk management, including surface water run-off, groundwater and flooding from ordinary water courses, was passed to lead local authorities, of which Westminster City Council is one.

Westminster City Council had already identified, via its floods policy, that:

“Due to the heavily urbanised nature of Westminster, and the predominantly Victorian drainage infrastructure, there is a widespread risk of surface water flooding…It is expected that sewer flooding may occur within Westminster and a consistent risk profile is therefore applicable. There is a risk of groundwater flooding within Westminster, and this risk is likely to be exacerbated by increased below ground development (basement extensions etc.).”

The issue of basement extensions has been a hugely controversial one for me in recent years.

The council’s floods policy continues:

“There is a residual risk of flooding due to the failure of either water mains or canals”.

The council recognised in the policy that:

“Further enhanced surface water flood risk modelling was undertaken…in 2015…The study considered the impact of climate change on surface water flood risk assuming a 20% and 40% increase in peak rainfall intensity.”

The council is currently undertaking its own review of the July floods and we expect a report imminently. However, it is already clear that the increased risk of flooding, due to climate change in particular, was understood.

So what happened on 12 July, the day of these particular floods? In the afternoon, intense rain impacted on an estimated 500 properties, mostly, although not entirely, in the Maida Vale area. The water rose incredibly quickly and in addition to the rain and the overflow, sewage pipes backed up, covering many homes—particularly basements—with raw sewage. Thousands of calls were made to Thames Water, with little or no response from it in the immediate aftermath of the flooding.

The London Fire Brigade was in attendance and many local residents spoke of there then being a specific intervention by the fire brigade, which led water to drain away “like a plug being pulled out of a bath”. Over that night and the next day or two, hundreds of residents and businesses were left in crisis, due not only to the damage but to the obvious health risk associated with the sewage overflows.

After a varyingly slow start, which was particularly slow by Thames Water, staff from the council, from housing providers and then from Thames Water got to the scene to support people and begin the clear-up. People helped their neighbours magnificently and many staff worked very hard in the aftermath to ease the distress. Even so, people fell through the net. One constituent, who is HIV positive and currently receiving cancer treatment, was put into a hotel and no payment was made. My office was dealing with him on the night after the floods when he was crying in the lobby because of the lack of support.

Many people had to be urgently rehoused after their home was flooded with sewage. That was not organised for a couple of days and, even now—as recently as last week—I heard from a woman who is still confined to a single room in her home as she is immune suppressed and the rest of her home is badly affected by the damp and mould, to which she cannot risk prolonged exposure.

Those affected and many others in the at-risk areas want to know why the water rose so fast and why the sewers backed up and then why the water disappeared so fast once the London Fire Brigade attended. They deserve to know whether anything could have been done sooner to avert disaster as the rain fell. A typical comment went, “As you might know, the water levels dropped very suddenly after the fire brigade attended on our street and seemingly opened a flood valve or removed some kind of obstruction. The rain was still falling as heavily as it had been, but the water went, in my case, from 70 cm deep to ground level within minutes. Thames Water are blaming heavy rainfall but that does not explain how the water just dissipated.”

Many, although not all those affected in Westminster—the problem was particularly concentrated in the Maida Vale area—have a wider question. After localised flooding some 10 years ago, ward councillors, residents and I pressed Thames Water to increase drainage capacity in the W9 and NW6 areas. This was strongly resisted for some time. Thames Water took the line that these were 100-year events. We counter-argued that there had now been two 100-year events in the course of just three years. It gave in, and in the middle of the last decade, new tanks were installed under Tamplin Gardens in W9 and additional capacity was increased, with major works around Warwick Avenue and Westbourne Green lasting two years.

In 2012, Thames Water told us it would complete the Maida Vale sewer flooding alleviation scheme over the next two years, saying that the alleviation project would cover four wards in the Maida Vale area and be good news for the 400 or so residents who have experienced sewer flooding over the past few years, some of whom have been flooded with sewage up to nine times.

The heart of the matter is this question, which Thames Water and, to some extent, Westminster, must answer. Why did a major alleviation scheme designed to cope with 100-year events fail so spectacularly within just half a decade? Was the additional capacity insufficient and should that have been foreseen six or seven years ago? Was the system properly operational? Were there any blockages in the system? Were the drains clear and properly maintained? If the rain that fell on 12 July was a 300-year event, as we have now been told, how long before it fails again?

If Thames Water now suggests that we cannot build our way out of the severe weather-related flood risk, how and when will a package of alternative measures be put in place across agencies to achieve a reasonable level of protection?

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate because several hundred of my constituents were equally affected by the floods she is describing. Thames Water candidly described its response to me as “bloody awful”. It said it was under new management with new shareholders, but it is always under new management and new shareholders. That is the problem. It was exactly the same 10 or 15 years ago, when the same properties were flooded for the same reasons and the schemes have either been cancelled or have not worked. Does she agree that, like the Thames tunnel and the Bazalgette sewers we rely on now, whoever ends up paying for and delivering this, it needs Government direction, because this is a serious matter that repeatedly affects our constituents?

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is right. We are constantly told that Thames Water is under new management. That management always seems to enjoy a level of remuneration that would make my constituents blanch. It continues to charge costs to consumers and is seemingly impervious to the kind of challenges and questions that he and I are raising.

We were told by Thames Water at a public meeting at the end of July that this event was simultaneously unforeseeable and yet also likely to happen again. Legally, its position remains that it is not liable for the damage arising as a result of the flooding. It claims that London’s sewers were never designed to deal with rain on that scale, and yet relies on the fact that its systems meet the targets as evidence that it was not negligent. If that position holds and is reaffirmed by the inquiry set up by Thames Water, this question arises: how can targets be adjusted significantly to reflect the changing weather expected over the coming years before more homes are affected by similar events?

Almost everyone who was in touch with me and ward councillors over the days and weeks after the July floods has good grounds for feeling that Thames Water failed them with its response that night and in the aftermath. A significant minority of people whose homes were flooded are still suffering and feel that their housing providers, council and Thames Water have not acted as swiftly and caringly as they might have done, despite many of the employees stretching every sinew to help.

What assessment has been made of the capacity in local authorities and housing providers to resource their emergency responses? They have been cut back drastically in the past decade and, as we saw with Grenfell, an effective emergency response cannot be guaranteed without the staff available to deliver it. Increasingly, they also have to be able to manage more than one crisis at a time, or in close succession.

Has the Minister undertaken an assessment of the capacity of local councils and others to support residents who lose everything in disasters such as this? Local support payments are designed to patch the increasingly large holes in social security, not to help what might be hundreds of people on lower incomes who are uninsured and left without furniture, clothing and toys. Also, local support payments offer assistance only to those on qualifying benefits—excluding people on working tax credits, for example.

Locally, we have organised crowd funding and worked with the local voluntary sector to relieve hardship. I congratulate such volunteers and One Westminster for their assistance; they have been significantly more supportive of the community than has Thames Water, which I asked to contribute to the hardship funding quite separately from the issue of liability—a request that has been ignored. Why is it that volunteers and community organisations can raise more money for people who have been devastated by floods than the powerful monopoly water provider can?

I turn back to the flood itself. The threat of recurrence now haunts us locally. How are the Government working with local authorities in areas such as mine, where large numbers of basement properties are understood to be at particular risk? Westminster’s 2019 flood policy states:

“Self-contained basements or basement flats wholly or partially below ground without freely available access at all times to a habitable space above ground level within the same dwelling are ‘highly vulnerable’”,

and that

“applicants are encouraged to incorporate flood resistance and resilience measures as part of the design…to prevent water ingress and to reduce flood damage should flooding occur.”

Is encouragement enough, however? How will that be monitored? Where will the responsibility lie in privately owned properties, whether freehold or leasehold? What rights do private tenants have? Who would pay for such alterations to social housing? The time for warm words and vagueness is definitely now over; in terms of damage and indeed safety, we need firmer action. Do the Government have plans to scale up the expectations of local councils—backed by the necessary resources—to review, report on and deal with factors that expose residents to flood risk?

Then there is Thames Water. Ultimately, as I said, residents feel that Thames Water let them down catastrophically. One typical comment was:

“Thames Water were extremely slow in dealing with this emergency and when they made an appointment either didn't turn up or if they did were several hours late. They then arrived with a dust pan and brush and a bottle of bleach and were quite unhelpful commenting always how it was not the fault of Thames Water and what a wonderful company they are.”

My constituents believe they deserve compensation for the damage caused, although Thames Water has already been quick to deny liability. Will the Minister assist my constituents and me in pressing Thames Water to ensure that the already somewhat foot-dragging independent inquiry is now completed as a matter of urgency, so that we have absolute clarity on the sequence of events on 12 July? How can my constituents hold Thames Water to account more effectively given the obvious imbalance in power and resources between them—me—and a private company of such size enjoying a monopoly position as a provider? I and hundreds of local residents need the support of the Government if capacity is to be increased, people protected and Thames Water held to account. I look forward to the Minister’s response.