The Building Safety Regulator: Building a Better Regulator (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of H4Life and as a partner in Quoin Partners, which represents the building development industry. I very much welcome this report; it is really an excellent piece of work. I also welcome the Government’s initial response to the report. I welcome, too, the work that my noble friend Lord Roe has done since he took up his role as chair of the Building Safety Regulator. He has clearly had a significant impact in that new position.

I do not have the knowledge that some have, having not followed this report all the way through the committee, but I wanted to talk a little about my own journey to the Building Safety Regulator, which started on 3 July 2009, when six people died in a fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell. I was the leader of the opposition group in Southwark at that time. It was a dreadful evening, and a dreadful period in Southwark’s history. Lakanal was a 14-story council-owned block, which had recently undergone major repairs. What happened at Lakanal was that a fire broke out in a television set and spread through the exterior cladding panels. It also went through voids that should have been protecting residents in the block, but which had been compromised during recent works, with holes being drilled and new pipes being inserted. The stay-put policy of the London Fire Brigade at that time, which was followed that night in Lakanal, was found to be wanting, because people were not safe—they did not have the 45-minute or hour-long protection that they should have had in their homes on that night. It is appalling to think of the six residents who died because they stayed put in their flats.

That was an incident that scarred Southwark. The 2013 inquest made recommendations. The coroner sent a rule 43 letter to the Secretary of State, the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, as he now is. But while Southwark embarked on a significant number of fire safety works, spending £70 million on our blocks in the aftermath of Lakanal, that was not the story nationwide. What breaks my heart is that some of the lessons from Lakanal were clearly not learned by the time of Grenfell. If lessons had been learned about exterior cladding, the compromising of the integrity of the building by those works and about the stay-put policy, about which my noble friend Lord Roe, has spoken so eloquently in the past, maybe the result would have been different.

However, with such a severe loss of life, the reaction from government and society to the Grenfell Tower fire was significant, unlike with Lakanal. We have talked about Dame Judith Hackitt’s inquiry from May 2018, which made so many important recommendations and brought about the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator. I remember going to a presentation that Dame Judith gave about the impact of her report and thinking that it would have quite an impact on the skyline of London if it was followed through. Suddenly, we were talking about having a different regime for buildings of 18 metres and below and for those above that height. I do not think that that was a point that the industry necessarily picked up on at that time, in 2018 and 2019; it did not recognise that this was going to mean a very different approach.

On my next contact with the Building Safety Regulator, I was particularly impressed by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding; she perfectly captured the problems that we saw with the creation of that regulator. I saw that, alarmingly, during a presentation at the Local Government Association conference in July 2023. This was before the Building Safety Regulator had done a thing—it was being created. I went along and heard some description, and I suppose we knew that these descriptions were going to come about post Hackitt, but they started talking about “higher risk buildings” in new-build terms. Who wants to go and live in a higher risk building? I thought, “This is going to have an impact”, and indeed some of the terminology we have used has had an impact on people’s desire to live in new builds that are described as high risk, which has had a knock on effect on the mortgage market.

The most alarming thing in that presentation at the LGA conference was representatives from the Building Safety Regulator saying, “Well, we’ve got a target of 13 weeks”—I thought it was 13 weeks but actually it might be 12—“but I can tell you now that we’re not going to meet it”. I thought, “This is odd. How can you be a regulator that hasn’t even started work yet but you’re telling the world that you’re not going to meet the targets that you have set?” The only interpretation that I could put on it was that if they were saying they were not going to meet 13 weeks then it was going to be 26 weeks or even longer, and that is how reality has played out. That comes about from the points that my noble friend Lady Taylor and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, talked about: not properly resourcing the Building Safety Regulator at the start set it up to fail. As the noble Baroness said, that is a lesson that must be learned and taken away from this experience.

I would say that no builder or developer I have ever met wants to build an unsafe building; I think we can accept that. They want to be cost effective but they do not want to build an unsafe building. However, with the BSR we have created an overly bureaucratic regime. It is costly and has been time consuming. I have talked about the anticipated missed deadlines; they have come true, and we know that it has taken a year, if not longer, for some applications to pass through the BSR process.

There have also been some incredibly perverse results. I learned about a building of 100 new apartments in London that was complete and which waited for at least a year to be signed off by the Building Safety Regulator. Even though people had paid for the apartments because they were now complete, they had not been signed off so they could not be occupied. This is a crazy dystopian world that we have entered, where the BSR is, essentially preventing people from moving into completed buildings.

As everyone has observed, the BSR has contributed to a significant reduction in house building in London at a time when we need to be building more, not less. Someone said we need to ensure that it is not complex and confusing. I think the BSR is complex and confusing in the way that it operates at the moment.

I welcome what my noble friend Lord Roe has talked about today. I hear what he says about speed, and it will help the industry if the BSR regularly publishes its performance tables, because that will begin to send out a message about the regulator’s effectiveness. However, consistency is as important, and there is a massive complaint at the moment that I hear about consistency of decision-making. The point has been made already: if you have one building that goes through the BSR process and an identical building is then proposed next door or nearby, that one still has to go through the entire process. There does not seem to be any way of short-circuiting that, although maybe my noble friend will correct me afterwards. Surely, if one building has been signed off for safety, something that is identical could also be. Then there is the issue of fire doors that are accepted as safe by one part of the BSR but not accepted as safe by another, so a stand-off takes place between the developer and the BSR about whether those fire doors are safe or not. Consistency seems to me to be hugely important in how the BSR performs.

I want to talk about how I became interested in this issue and the lessons from Lakanal House. We need to achieve something speedy, effective and consistent from the Building Safety Regulator, so I ask the Minister for her observations on how we can ensure that it is delivering that speed, effectiveness and consistency. I would hugely welcome her comments on that.

We know that the performance of the BSR has had an adverse impact on the building industry. I have talked about the impact of people being afraid to get involved in higher-risk buildings. It has undoubtedly had an impact, because of the uncertainty of timing, on investment into London: investors cannot just put money forward without knowing when a building might be signed off; they need to know that there is a realistic prospect of deadlines being met. I take heart from what the noble Lord, Lord Roe, said, but there are still issues to be addressed.

There are undoubtedly some things about the state of the building industry in London and across the country that are outside our control, such as world events and other financial considerations, but the performance of the Building Safety Regulator is within our control. It is certainly within the control of the noble Lord, Lord Roe, more than it is of most of us. This is something on which we should bear down so that, as others have talked about, we can give confidence to the industry and to housebuilders to get the new homes built that we so desperately need.

Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley. I fondly recall the times in London Councils meetings when we would sit around the table and agree on virtually everything—sadly, this will probably not be so today, but it is still a pleasure to speak after her. I am pleased to speak in support of the Social Housing Bill and in particular the restrictions which the Bill introduces on the exercise of the right to buy. In doing so, I declare my interests as non-executive chair of H4Life, in Quoin Partners and as a member of the advisory board of LHG.

There are some policies pursued by Governments which are very much of their time. Perhaps regrettably, we do not review those policies sufficiently regularly and they become enshrined in our body politic, but they were the answer to the question of a different era. Right to buy is one such policy. That does not mean that Conservatives cannot be proud of that policy, but nor does it mean that it is the right policy for today.

Let us look at the differences between then and now. In 1980, London was a city whose population was declining, down to 6.8 million from 7.5 million the previous decade. Councils had vacant council housing stock and—can noble Lords believe?—hard-to-let properties. The average property price in London was about £22,500; that is £75,000 in today’s money. For this city, the policy of right to buy met a number of challenges—the realistic aspiration which many people had of owning their own home, at a time when property prices were relatively low, and there was surplus housing stock across the capital.

Today the figures are starkly different. London’s population is 9.1 million, having risen from 8.2 million 10 years ago. That is an increase of a third from 1981. Councils have ever-increasing waiting lists for council housing, and they face the massive financial and social challenge of dealing with the need for and cost of temporary accommodation.

There is no spare housing, let alone properties which are hard to let; there is a housing shortage. The average property price is £542,000—more than seven times, in real terms, the cost of a home in 1980. Sadly, the aspiration of owning your own home is something which many young people regard as being a wholly unrealistic prospect. Renting their own home, rather than a room, is their property ambition.

It is in this context that we consider the Bill. It is plainly right that local authorities should be allowed to protect their existing stock when it is such a scarce and valuable commodity. I welcome the extension of the qualifying period from three to 10 years—it is clearly right. I was also struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that maybe we should be looking for a longer qualifying period.

I particularly welcome the indefinite right of first refusal, which will be given to local authorities which have had to sell property under the right to buy. Bringing former social housing stock back into use as general needs housing is often a speedy and cost-effective way to increase council housing stock. If it can be used as a way to help regenerate estates and provide more housing for future needs, that must be a good thing.

I am pleased to see the protections given to newly built stock in Clause 18. When I was leader in Southwark and we embarked upon our council housebuilding programme, which was, and remains, the largest programme in the country—a commitment to build 11,000 new homes—we were concerned that we would be building stock which we might lose relatively swiftly to right to buy. The proposed protection of that stock for 35 years will give some reassurance not only to Southwark but to those local authorities across the country which are building new stock, and it will convince them that they are right to build. I think that there is an argument for considering a longer period because quite often the cost of the build has not been repaid after those 35 years; let us look at the real-terms period when those costs will be repaid.

Many problems remain with our ability as a country to deliver the new social housing which we need—not just social housing but housing as a whole. The money spent by local authorities on building new homes is undermined by the amount which we seem content to spend on temporary accommodation and homelessness. But, importantly, with that restriction on right to buy, the Bill protects what we do have, and for that reason it should be hugely welcomed.

Stamp Duty: Periodic Tenancies

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I want to reassure tenants and landlords that very few tenants will be affected by this in the first year. A tenancy must have extremely high rents or have been running for a very long time under the previous system to even approach the stamp duty threshold in the first year. HMRC’s assessment is that this will be a very small number of cases. We intend to ensure that even in those rare instances, tenants do not face a stamp duty land tax charge as a result of these reforms. We will work with HMRC to make sure that clear and accessible guidance is available for both tenants and landlords.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the ways in which we meet the concerns that the noble Lord has raised is by increasing the housing supply. Can my noble friend the Minister give us an update on the social and affordable housing programme that the Government are supporting?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am very pleased to give the House an update on the social and affordable housing programme. We have now published its prospectus, and the Government have put in £39 billion of funding to kick-start social and affordable housebuilding at scale across the country. The core objective of that new programme will be to maximise supply, with a target to deliver at least 60% of the homes under the programme at social rent. That will be around 300,000 social and affordable homes over the programme’s lifetime. We published the guidance in November 2025, and we are now calling on all registered providers to review the details confirmed and to prepare large and ambitious proposals. We want to see the social landlord sector really embrace this. The bidding process opened in February, and we look forward to receiving some good bids.

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord John of Southwark]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on local government reorganisation in England.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing, I declare my interests as a peer mentor adviser for the Local Government Association and Thurrock Council.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, local government reorganisation is a once-in-a-generation reform. Our vision is clear: stronger local councils equipped to drive economic growth, improve public services and empower their communities. We are working with 204 councils across 21 areas. We have already announced two new councils for Surrey, with elections expected there this May. We anticipate decisions on a further six areas later in March, following the closure of consultation on 11 January. For the remaining areas, the Government are on track and committed to the indicative timetable published last July. Decisions on which proposals to implement, if any, will be announced before the start of the Summer Recess 2026; elections to new councils will follow in May 2027, with the go-live date will be April 2028.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her Answer. One part of the country that is not included in the current plans for local government reorganisation is London, despite it now being nearly 30 years since the current model of London governance was introduced. Given that the London model is idiosyncratic in comparison with other combined authority models, does my noble friend share my belief that a review of London’s governance is long overdue? If she does, can she tell me when the Government might undertake such a review?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

Noble Lords will be aware that the Mayor of London is directly elected by the people of London every four years, alongside the London Assembly, which scrutinises the mayor’s work. This model is unique among strategic authorities and has successfully served the people of London for the last 25 years. The Government are regularly in contact with the GLA to understand how its governance and partnership working arrangements are delivering for Londoners. As London’s devolution settlement evolves, the Government hope to continue to see positive working between the GLA and its partners, including London borough councils, to deliver on shared priorities, and we hope to build on these where possible.

Local Government Reorganisation

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I have the greatest respect for Jonathan Carr-West and have worked with him on many occasions, but he has not seen the legal advice. It is a long-standing principle, as the right honourable Gentleman James Cleverly said at the other end—I could quote him if I had the quote in front of me—that the Government do not comment on or publish legal advice.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the concerns expressed to me by colleagues in local government has been about the cost of preparing submissions and scoping work for local government reorganisation. My noble friend talked about the £63 million of additional funding that will go to local government to support it going forward. Can she give reassurance to those in local government that the £63 million will meet the costs that they are going to incur? As I say, some of the concerns expressed to me have been that previous government tranches of money have not met all the costs incurred.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I can reassure my noble friend that an unprecedented amount of funding has been provided to support the capacity that local councils will need to help them as they go through this transition process. It is important that we have also been working closely with those councils. I have done much of the engagement myself, and Minister McGovern has done an awful lot of engagement with councils as well. Our officials in the department have been hugely supportive to local government as they have gone through this process, so it is right that we provide some funding to support that as well. The £63 million is to undertake that reorganisation to support the implementation, and it will include those councils that have been impacted by the changes that were made on Monday.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord John of Southwark Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th January 2026 Grand Committee

I think that is the direction which we should be going in: a bolder direction than that set by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and in alignment with government policy elsewhere. I look forward to hearing the Minister explain why that simple and obvious proposition is one that she is not going to support.

[Lord John of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate feels like getting the gang back together around this table. I declare my political interest as a former chair of London Councils and leader of Southwark Council. It is particularly nice to see so many colleagues from those days. I acknowledge the significance of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. They are useful and necessary, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, almost made the case for them during her speech. We have a very clunky system at the moment, in which London Councils makes decisions but cannot be the accountable body for them. Money has to be funnelled through the City of London or, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, referenced, during Covid the City of Westminster had to contract on our behalf for additional mortuary provision. London Councils, having made decisions about this, should be able to contract and receive money on its own behalf. These amendments do perhaps tidy things up but they are none the less very important.

I know that the Government are reluctant to embark on a widespread review of London government at this time, but there are three good reasons why we should consider very carefully the noble Baroness’s amendment. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I should make it clear that I do not advocate a review of the 32 boroughs; my approach at this time would be to leave it alone because it works.

First, as others have mentioned, it is nearly 30 years since we properly reviewed London’s governance, which is a long time. Secondly, the London system is unique, again as others have referenced, but I do not think it is necessarily unique in a good way. Thirdly, and I think this important for the Government to consider, if they do review London governments there is an opportunity to make very real savings in how London government operates, and make it more efficient.

Why do I say that? First, we have no formal decision-making link at present, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, referenced, between the mayor and the boroughs. In stark contrast to all other combined authorities, there is no requirement for the mayor to have that link with the boroughs. Everything that happens is effectively dependent on the good will of the mayor at that time. While this has worked to date, that is not necessarily the best way of operating. The mayor and the boroughs are two entirely separate entities and, while their paths cross over, the mayor can make decisions that have a massive impact on the boroughs, from planning and housing targets to issues such as the Freedom Pass. I recall mayoral candidates making commitments about Freedom Pass which then had to be funded and administered by the boroughs. That is not a satisfactory way to progress.

Every government fund that is devolved to London has to be the subject of individual negotiation. That is not particularly sensible either. For instance, negotiations on how to agree and distribute proportions for the first round of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund took over six months to agree, because there was no formal structure in place for the mayor to work with the boroughs. For the second round, the Greater London Authority unilaterally changed the rules and proportions that had been agreed with London Councils. Again, that is a defect in the system of how London government currently works. Here is a real opportunity for us to look now at whether there could be a better model of how the mayor works with the boroughs. I have great sympathy for the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill.

The second point I should reference is in relation to the London Assembly. I am nervous because obviously we have some great figures here from the London Assembly’s history, but we have to recognise that it is a body utterly divorced from the work of London’s boroughs. That is the reality. It operates in parallel to the boroughs. I cannot remember a single occasion when there was a joint meeting, for instance, between London’s leaders and the London Assembly. The assembly does some very good work—I do not knock the work of great figures such as the noble Lords, Lord Harris and Lord Tope, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon—but there is no crossover with the boroughs and no requirement for any. When we look at the future governance of London, there is an opportunity to consider the role and function of the assembly. Could that important scrutiny function that it delivers be met in a slightly different way?

While I recognise that the Government might not be keen on this review of London governance, there is an opportunity to look at these issues and I ask the Minister what reassurance she can give us today that the Government will force London to look at itself. I know that she thinks that the mayor and the London councils are having these conversations. I am not convinced that those conversations are happening in the way in which she would like them to be happening. What reassurance can she give us that those conversations will take place in earnest, because it is an important opportunity for London to review the way in which it governs itself?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Other than that, I can declare only a very modest involvement in councils in London. I twice unsuccessfully ran for Camden Council in the days when the Green Party was in a different position from where we are today.

I first want to address Amendment 71 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. I entirely agree with the noble Lord’s simple cry, “Democracy now”. We have a London Assembly and it needs to be able to hold the mayor to account on spending much more strongly than it is able to now by nature of the constitutional arrangements. That is a clear and obvious step forward. It is no secret that the Green Party is no fan of the strong leader model. We believe that the more voices there are and the more input you have into decisions, the better. The London Assembly has been denied the input into the budget that it might have by those arrangements.

I respect the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and agree with him on lots of things but in this case I do not. Scale is not an appropriate way in which to think about the size of London boroughs and how they are divided up. This is by title a community empowerment Bill. Different London boroughs have different community lives and demographics. I think of the fact that, for example, Barnet and Camden are in one territorial London Assembly member seat but they are two very different places. It is important that we have that representation. We are seeing significant under-representation in the rest of the country rather than too much representation in London.

I strongly support Amendments 182 and 183 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others. Local representatives in those boroughs need to be able to get together and work together. They do as much as they can, but that would be a simple step forward.

Finally, on the review of London’s governance model, I might be coming at that in Amendment 75 from a different direction from some others, but it is worth highlighting and celebrating the great work that the London Assembly does, even with the restrictions on its powers. We have not talked about what that is. I draw attention to a practical piece of work done by Caroline Russell, a London Assembly member, about the provision of public toilets in this city. A lot of people care about that very much. People do not regard it as an exciting political subject but when campaigning, listening to Londoners and hearing, particularly from disabled, disadvantaged Londoners and people with small children, one sees that that kind of step is important. It shows what the assembly does.