Building Safety Bill

Lord Jordan Excerpts

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

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, on Amendment 262, I have to tell the House that when RoSPA campaigned for the introduction of car seat belts, it said that would save lives—and it did, spectacularly. Now we are campaigning for safer stairs in new-build houses and saying again that it will save lives, which it will. More than that, it will significantly reduce the appalling number of serious, life-damaging injuries that result in needless pain and suffering. It will in turn lift some of the colossal burden on the NHS, a burden that absorbs so much of its money and resources in doctors’, technicians’ and nurses’ time.

The Minister has shown in his dialogue with RoSPA’s chief executive, and in the things he said in this Chamber, that he truly understands the enormous benefit that enshrining BS 5395-1 in building regulations will bring. I hope he is equally convinced of the urgency of this vital reform and that, today, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, said, he assures your Lordships that he will not let it be bogged down in the labyrinthine legislative process and that he gives us a timescale and a plan by which this reform will become a reality.

[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.

Building Safety Bill

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as vice-president of RoSPA. I shall not take too long, however, because those who have already spoken have made a watertight case for Amendment 120 to be included in the Bill.

The truth is we do not have to convince the Minister, certainly not of the value of this amendment. He said enough at Second Reading for us to know that he would like the life-saving potential of this amendment to be built into every new house. But we have to convince him that its capabilities to prevent injury and death should be in the Bill now. He must know that every alternative to these words going into the Bill now means delaying the introduction of measures that would help prevent injury and death. It would be a fatal delay because, when we are certain that today, tomorrow and the day after, people will fall downstairs and be seriously injured or killed, we see the tragic implications of delaying this measure.

Building Safety Bill

Lord Jordan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill was born out of a disaster—one that saw many people killed and injured in their own homes. The Bill, which we all support, will enact measures to prevent that happening again. Tonight, however, we have heard that many more needless deaths and injuries are still happening now in homes, which the Bill could and should take steps to prevent.

I too declare my interest as a vice-president of RoSPA, which is leading a campaign to significantly reduce these injuries and deaths occurring in homes across the country by making staircases safer. The campaign’s objective has earned itself a strong base of cross-party support in the other place, and we are now hoping that your Lordships will demonstrate the same unity and bring about the passing of an amendment embedding safe stairs in law.

Your Lordships have heard that the amendment will simply ask the Secretary of State to consult on regulations requiring staircases in all new-build properties to comply with the latest industry standard for stairs. This would not be a case of requiring existing properties to replace staircases, nor would it be a case of inventing a new stair safety specification from scratch. We have an existing construction industry standard that is already proven to be safer and is approved by industry. All we ask is that this standard is legally mandated for new-build homes, putting safety into building design.

We will not find a better or easier opportunity to make houses in this country safer at such a minimal cost. We should not turn it down. Nor should we accept the Government’s excuse that primary legislation is not the right place for this amendment. There is ample precedent for mandating standards in this way. An indefensible argument must not stand in the way of saving lives.

The statistics around staircase accidents, including the human and economic costs, are horrifying and unacceptable. We all take it for granted that falls on stairs will happen, but do we really take on board what that means when we hear that every year 700 people lose their lives and thousands more continue to go through pain, suffering and loss of independence because of bone-shattering accidents? We must not forget that the homes we build today must still be standing long after we are gone. It is certain that, if we do not make stairs safer now, lives will be lost. However, an amendment to the Bill that requires a safer standard for stairs in newly built houses will leave a life-saving legacy for future generations.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I want to talk about the proposed building safety Bill referred to in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. In doing so, I declare an interest as vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

Following the tragedy at Grenfell, the Government’s response in bringing forward further legislation is welcome, and this House has rightly spent much time debating and discussing fire safety. However, I draw the Minister’s attention to another area of building safety as crucial and urgent as fire safety. Is he aware that a person in this country is 234 times more likely to be hospitalised from a fall in the home than from a fire, and that almost one-third of a million people attend accident and emergency each year because of falls? Unsurprisingly, the majority of them are elderly people, given that 12 million people in the UK are now over the age of 65. Most Members of this House will know someone who has had a fall in this way and be aware of the consequences that falls can have. As well as the physical injuries caused by a fall in the home, it will often be a catalyst for a longer decline in health from which many never recover. The cumulative cost of this, in terms of the pain and suffering inflicted on individuals and their families and the cost to the NHS, which is estimated at £4.4 billion, is unacceptable.

The Government’s building safety Bill offers an opportunity to make a significant contribution to ending the reputation of the home as the most dangerous place in Britain. RoSPA’s concern for safety in the home has led it to work with representatives of the housebuilding industry, and together they have developed a new framework for safety in the home, called Safer by Design. Among other things, this framework calls for the adoption of British Standard 5395 on stair design, which is backed by industry as being commercially and technically viable and creating a radically improved safety outcome, with 60% fewer falls on stairs designed to this standard.

The Government have an ambitious housebuilding programme and I am sure that they are equally ambitious that when houses are built, the safety of the occupants is seen as essential. I can tell them that “safer by design” was crafted to fulfil that ambition. Their involvement in the project would signal a clear intention to make the home a safer place.

I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the other place to use the Building Safety Bill to demonstrate their direction of purpose by first addressing the critical issue of staircase safety. This would require that the new British Standard not only be in this Bill but be made mandatory. Many lives would be saved as a result, and it would also prevent Britain’s best builders being undercut by those in the industry who are prepared to sacrifice safety in pursuit of profit. If the tragedy of Grenfell has taught us anything, it is that measures designed to secure people’s safety must not be optional. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Housebuilding: Accidents in the Home

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Jordan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance they have given to the housebuilding sector in order to reduce the number of accidents within the home.

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

In begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare an interest as vice-president of RoSPA.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that all homes are safe and that people feel safe in their homes. We have banned combustible cladding on tall residential buildings and are embarking on a process to systematically review the approved documents to the building regulations on a range of safety measures in response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s review. Moreover, we introduced building safety legislation in the Queen’s Speech to provide a tougher new regulatory framework.

[Lord Jordan]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Some 11.5 million adults over 65 live in the UK. The NHS says that around one in three will have at least one fall every year, and about half of those will have more frequent falls. Falls continue to be a leading cause of accident-related A&E attendances and overnight hospital admissions. With their goal to build 300,000 houses a year, will the Government advise and encourage house builders to adopt the recommendations of RoSPA’s proposed safer by design framework? This embraces not only elements from the British Standard 5395 code of practice for the design of stairs and steps but other significant fall prevention measures that cost so little to implement at the design stage.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We welcome the work of RoSPA and take note of its design standard, Safer by Design: A Framework to Reduce Serious Accidental Injury in New-Build Homes, which I have here and have read. We are developing a programme to review the building regulations guidance and will carefully consider any relevant recommendations from RoSPA. However, the noble Lord makes a more important point: the figures are pretty awful. We have a figure of 255,000 fall-related emergency hospital admissions per year for older people, and the annual cost to the UK of hip fractures is estimated to be around £2 billion, so this is an important matter.